Face/Off 

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Director: John Woo
Cast: John Travolta, Nicolas Cage, Joan Allen, Gina Gershon, Harve Presnell

Nicholas Cage and John Travolta So most of you know the premise by now; good cop John Travolta captures international terrorist and all-around bad guy Nicolas Cage, and must surgically become him in order to find out the truth from his bomb-making brother. Well, maybe you didn't know the entire premise, but believe me, I didn't give anything away that you wouldn't figure out in the first thirteen minutes.

Make no mistake, this movie is an ultra-violent bullet-ride that has a higher body count than an ethnic cleansing. Ridiculously fast-paced (Hollywood seems to the think that any camera shot longer than a nanosecond leaves us bored and drooling) and full of dubious scientific creations, it's a lot to swallow. SO many questions left unanswered, especially from the "facial replacement surgery" scenes (how do their teeth change? how does this computer chip in the vocal cords make Travolta sound like Cage?) that if you were allowed a second to breathe, the suspension of disbelief would come crashing down around you.

Director John Woo knows he has no room for contemplation, and leaves none. Despite its tragic flaws, "Face/Off" remains a largely enjoyable flick, full of little subtleties from Cage and Travolta that more than pay their exorbitant salaries. Joan Allen, who in this film looks a little like Michaelangelo doing bodywork on a '77 Trans Am, manages to give the screenplay a human grace lacking from most other movie "cop spouses."

Summer's here for real, folks. Put on your large popcorn dribble bib and prepare for battle.

—Ian Williams

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