Face/Off

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  • Opened June 27, 1997 
  • 2 hr 18 min
  • R

  • Parents: Common Sense Media says Iffy for 16+. More on child suitability

  • Obsessed with bringing terrorist Castor Troy (Nicolas Cage) to justice, FBI agent Sean Archer (John Travolta) tracks down Troy, who has boarded a plane in Los Angeles. After the plane crashes and Troy is severely injured, possibly dead, Archer undergoes surgery to remove his face and replace it with Troy's. As Archer tries to use his disguise to elicit information about a bomb from Troy's brother, Troy awakes from a coma and forces the doctor who performed the surgery to give him Archer's face. Full synopsis

  • Cast: John Travolta, Nicolas Cage, Joan Allen, Alessandro Nivola, Gina Gershon, Dominique Swain
  • Director: John Woo
  • Genres: Action/Adventure

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Critic Reviews

100
San Francisco Chronicle
| Mick LaSalle

It's the picture that proves action films don't have to be silly, that a few thrill sequences don't mean every other value has to be shot to pieces. Read full review

100
Rolling Stone
| Peter Travers

Exciting and then some, Face/Off blends the director's supercharged images of balletic brutality and spiritual catharsis with an off-the-wall humor that allows John Travolta and Nicolas Cage to really let it rip. Read full review

100
Empire
| Adam Smith

Sure there are niggles, the most obvious being the length, which could have been reduced by trimming the prison sequences, but in the end this may be his finest moment so far which, by default, puts it in as having a strong claim on the title "best action movie ever made". Really. Read full review

100
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
| Rick Groen

The result is a genre picture that transcends the genre, that gleefully embraces four qualities alien to the bulk of its noisy brethren: (1) thematic texture; (2) kinetic grace; (3) visuals that toy with the mind even while dazzling the eye; and (3) performers who are permitted to act like something other than human wicks for the pyrotechnical bombast. Read full review

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