I love this film but have never rewatched it. Mainly because I’ll never be able to replicate the experience of that first viewing. It was so perfectly OTT that I want to preserve it as is. My husband on the other hand watches it repeatedly and never fails to enjoy it
I agree with you, I'll say this and Con-Air were the last Cage movies I willingly watched. It wasn't exactly like I liked it against my will but maybe begrudgingly enjoyed it is accurate.
Face/Off is Woo's best Hollywood film, and approaches the heights of some of his Hong Kong epics but for sheer delirious delightful unhinged lunacy, (while simultaneously being uttery sincere) The Killer and Hard Boiled remain unmatched over 30 years later. They were both enormously influential on American (and international) action movies.
I don't think any of John Woo's best movies could pretend to be in any way, shape, or form "realistic". They start off with the action and the sentiment at 11, and crank the amps up from there—what, the knob broke off? Who cares? Grab a pair of pliers and keep going HIGHER, MAN!
One of the reasons THE KILLER was Woo's breakout movie in North America is because it's not just got some of the most insane action Americans have ever seen (and given this was in the middle of Hong Kong action cinema taking us by storm, that's saying something!), it's also because it wears its bloody heart on its sleeve. HARD BOILED, though the action is even crazier, doesn't have that emotional core, not really—not enough of Tequila and Alan falling in love with each other in a violently manly hetereosexual way in between the admittedly-amazing gunfights. Maybe that's because Johnny Wong keeps coming between them, clever and slimy and charismatically villainous—my (now-ex) wife and I kept calling him "Robert Klein" because he looked like Robert Klein playing sleazy comic villains in Seventies and Eighties movies.
FACE/OFF is more like THE KILLER—only there's no love between the two main men, just a determination to get their faces back and return to business as usual with the other dead. But you can see Travolta and Cage are both loving playing each other, and going to town with it.
Clever approach to a movie, but more confusing and clever evilness is not much help these days.
"oleaginous"
Do you use a thesaurus -- how do you write like that?
More please.
oleaginous is just in my vocabulary! it’s a fun word!
face/off is only helpful in the sense of being a lot of fun. it is not a profound or incisive insight into evil, alas.
I love this film but have never rewatched it. Mainly because I’ll never be able to replicate the experience of that first viewing. It was so perfectly OTT that I want to preserve it as is. My husband on the other hand watches it repeatedly and never fails to enjoy it
I agree with you, I'll say this and Con-Air were the last Cage movies I willingly watched. It wasn't exactly like I liked it against my will but maybe begrudgingly enjoyed it is accurate.
Face/Off is Woo's best Hollywood film, and approaches the heights of some of his Hong Kong epics but for sheer delirious delightful unhinged lunacy, (while simultaneously being uttery sincere) The Killer and Hard Boiled remain unmatched over 30 years later. They were both enormously influential on American (and international) action movies.
So, in other words, Travolta and Cage impersonate each other for the whole movie...
I don't think any of John Woo's best movies could pretend to be in any way, shape, or form "realistic". They start off with the action and the sentiment at 11, and crank the amps up from there—what, the knob broke off? Who cares? Grab a pair of pliers and keep going HIGHER, MAN!
One of the reasons THE KILLER was Woo's breakout movie in North America is because it's not just got some of the most insane action Americans have ever seen (and given this was in the middle of Hong Kong action cinema taking us by storm, that's saying something!), it's also because it wears its bloody heart on its sleeve. HARD BOILED, though the action is even crazier, doesn't have that emotional core, not really—not enough of Tequila and Alan falling in love with each other in a violently manly hetereosexual way in between the admittedly-amazing gunfights. Maybe that's because Johnny Wong keeps coming between them, clever and slimy and charismatically villainous—my (now-ex) wife and I kept calling him "Robert Klein" because he looked like Robert Klein playing sleazy comic villains in Seventies and Eighties movies.
FACE/OFF is more like THE KILLER—only there's no love between the two main men, just a determination to get their faces back and return to business as usual with the other dead. But you can see Travolta and Cage are both loving playing each other, and going to town with it.