Movie Review: Face/Off and its Addictive Spectacle

Ready to hit rewind on the 90s cult-classic action movie, "Face/Off"? Let us, your hosts Shawn and Kiley, take you on a thrilling trip down memory lane as we dissect this innovative, face-swapping epic. We promise to scrutinize every action-packed scene, analyze the dynamic between the charismatic leads - John Travolta and Nicolas Cage, and even expose some glaring plot weaknesses. However, despite its flaws, we can't help but admit how entertainingly addictive this John Woo spectacle truly is!

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Transcript

  📍 Welcome to Second Emulation, the podcast that explores all things pop culture, from movies and TV shows to the latest anime releases. Join us as we dive into the world of entertainment, sharing our thoughts, opinions, and insights on the latest trends and releases. With a focus on what's hot and what's not, we're your go-to source for all things pop culture. So sit back, relax, and let's get started

Welcome back to another episode and today we're going to talk about face off the movie were literally people's faces were clearly taken off a movie that has John Travolta and Nick Cage doing  Which later gets implemented in the matrix, but we see it here live and in action and  It's interesting. How are you?

And who are you again?  

And who am I? Yeah, what's your name? Oh, 

Shawn, and I'm Kiley 

Correct and There is a death counter for this movie because oh my 

god. So  

There are So many just,  bullets are,  people are like paper in this movie.  It's so true. Yeah,  the director was like, you know what, we just want to massacre.

We got John Travolta and Nick Cage. We just want to see just blood everywhere, people dying. And, yeah, pretty 

much. But before you talk about it, maybe we should explain the movies. It. It came out 1997!  It was directed by John Woo who loves good action! And just to explain the movie, Jon Tarotta,  I don't remember what his name  was! 

Shawn Archer, oh that's a weird name, but Shawn he plays Shawn Archer who is an anti terrorism agent who goes under the knife.  To change his face to Nicholas Cage's face, who's caster Troy? To gather details on a bombing plot?  Correct. And then what ends up happening is Nicholas Cage ends up waking up from whatever com he is in taking,  John Travolta's face.

And then it becomes a face off. Legitimately. Yeah. The 

legitimate face off. You know how.  What was it? Not the knowing. What was the movie that we also did?  Giving?  Where Nick Cage had,  he was a psychic.  Oh, next? Next. Where he was also trying to stop a bomb threat. 

Yeah, but he in that one, he was only stopping a bomb threat because someone was forcing him.

And this one, he was stopping a bomb threat because he was supposed to be.  John Travolta playing him.  Which sounds so absurd and you wouldn't think it would work, but it really actually did work. 

And mind you, this whole premise and this movie as you mentioned is in the year 1997. The technology that they  tell us for this  film doesn't exist.

Yeah, it definitely doesn't exist. It doesn't exist. 

They're able to, mind you, trade someone's face. They remove John Travolta's face and put on  freaking Nicolas Cage's face. They're able to change his entire body structure, so he loses weight magically.  His scars are gone, and he's got no scars from the face transplant.

It doesn't take him any time to heal. He's done he's in and out in 12 hours. 

Correct, so it's like complete  body construction plastic surgery  all within like Minutes and, vocal cords,  all that. But like the crazy thing is it's not just like they're taking the skin, like they're taking the muscle and everything.

Like it's a complete, of the face and they're putting it on. And at that point you're thinking there's no,  you're dead.  like you're under the knife and you're dead because you're bleeding out. They're not keeping you alive.  The doctor is go ahead, don't, no worry. Where, we were just going to make these decisions. 

We're just going to have this suction thing collapse down and suction.  And while it is suction it pulls your face. Or the face, the skin part and the muscle. You're gonna be exposed to all this bacteria and air.  

Listen, you gotta, you've gotta believe anything is possible. 

It's, again, it's the, it was the nineties and it was, It made for a good story, but when I say,  the technology and the how,  you can just fumble your way into an action movie and just create technology,  whoever wrote the script for this, and was like,  

It was the movie was actually very well done, so I was willing to suspend disbelief,  And a lot of that has to do based on John Travolta's and Nicolas Cage's performances, which I guess would lead us into the first,  section is, what were your favorite scenes in the movie? 

My favorite scene was the legitimate car  chase. Yeah. Like, when, where, essentially when they find out, So John Travolta is part of this terrorist group. They find out, the  Caster is about to blow up. They need to, obtain him. They know his location. He's about to jump ship.

It turns into this giant, we need to get him  before he flees.  And it turns out to this giant car chase on the runway, and John Travolta is not taking no for an answer. This guy is ramming his car into this private jet that Casser is in, and he's getting into a helicopter, and he's shooting.  The engine or panels of this plane like the guy is not giving up like he's like it's do or die and you're seeing this go down and other films, when essentially the villain gets into a private jet and he takes off  the good guys are like,  We'll just catch him in the air, not John Travolta.

He's like this guy, this bird staying grounded. He's doing everything possible. I've never seen so many guns in this first act of the movie being fired which also means I've never seen so many people die in the first half of this movie because  gone John Travolta,  He has his gun out and they're just firing gun bullets are just flying and you're thinking, okay, the laws of physics, they're gonna be taking cover. 

No, you're seeing what we were assumed to be dubbed  gung fu. You're seeing john Travolta propelling himself over things to hide under, he's crawling, and Caster is doing the same thing, and when they finally meet, it's like you're seeing  What would be the precursor of what John Wick was choreographed as because that's the only thing I could reference it to. 

I 

would say, yeah, it was pretty, again, it's the 90s, so obviously we don't have the CGI that we, they've tried to, not even tried, but  a lot of movies rely on. In this day and age. Which I guess makes sense because it's probably safer 

I think it was good. 

I think I was gonna say I thought it was good I actually preferred it the way that he did it because it was very  Like because they could not rely on and on CGI for certain things for most of this movie It was actual people with actual like  Prop guns and actual chases and all that stuff.

And a lot of it ended up paying off. Like you actually feel invested or interested into the movie. Like some of the action scenes were great. Like when they're hiding,  when he's changed his face and he's now already escaped from prison. And he's,  Archer is now Troy. So he's John Travolta as Nicolas Cage.

But still John Travolta. He goes to someone that is known by,  Troy's house for his ex with the kid and stuff. And that, there's a huge scene that comes where it's like a huge action scene where they, the police or people associated with,  with Archer, John Travolta's character, crash. Who of course is now Nicholas Cage.

So they're opposites basically. and then comes shooting in with bullets and bullets everywhere and people you know it's very similar to yeah to john wick The Fourth one. Where you get people getting shot and like Shooting each other and trying to not And  that's 

why I thought, that's what I got and I  Thanks to Ethan Wolfe That's my favorite scene, but there were many other favorite scenes, but that's a compliment because That was done again.

This film was done in the 1990s and that's a huge compliment to like to reference it like oh That reminds me of John wick and then this film first came out and all those action sequences of just like the gun play and all that stuff was like Precursor like it made me it gave me the John wick vibes and I'm like, oh shit I was more invested in this because it's like all that action and I it just the way it was written Like the tension between those two and like that first scene the gun chase was more believable than Con Air 

I know and you know what's actually funny is Con Air came out the same month That was two very different Nicolas Cages, but this one was This was definitely more believable.

He does a great job, they actually both do great jobs of pretending to be the other person. Obviously, Nicolas Cage immediately starts off like a crazy, you know like his normal crazy versions. Like he likes to play really outlandish, very extreme characters that he seems to be playing in a lot of these earlier movies.

But, when he takes on, Sean Archer's personality because he is supposed to be Sean Archer in that body. with that face!  He does a very good job of it coming across he is this person, He's  you know emotional, he's worried, he's trying to be a good husband and father and all these things, and it's very like he does a very good job of  making you believe even though you know it's not true.

You know it's not possible, but you do believe that it is possible. I would say all of the action was pretty much top notch. I really enjoyed it. I thought,  I also enjoyed John Travolta being, taking on the characteristics and the,  extremeness of Nicolas Cage's character,  caster Troy. And he did a great job, too, of seeming real bat shit crazy.

But what 

was your favorite scene? 

My favorite scene was actually, would actually be towards the end of the movie. I loved any scene where Nicholas Cage was acting, like in the beginning where he's just I'm crazy.  And he's in prison and John Travolta, now that he's changed his face, he's pretending to be Castro.

And he doesn't remember things because he doesn't have his memory. And people are, staring at him. So he has to initiate a fight. So people think that he's still the same person and he's not different. and he's just I'm crazy. He does the same thing and I thought that was very funny. But I like,  the scene at the end.

There's a scene where,   Castor Troy is in,  Sean  Archer's  body and he's trying to And John Travolta's character,  Sean Archer has a daughter who has a boyfriend who's like trying to pressure her into sex or whatever. So he gives her,  I don't know what kind of knife it's called. It's a switchblade.

like a switchblade knife, and he shows her how to use it. And this is  the bad guy, but in the good guy's face,  shows her how to use it and tells her how to use it, and then just goes about his day like he thinks he's done something good, and then at one point at the end, as he's John Travolta, character, he tries to take that girl hostage, now that he realizes the jig is up, and he's holding a gun to her head and she takes out the knife and stabs him in the leg the exact way he told her to do it, and I thought that was super cool.

I really enjoyed that. Poetic justice. It was poetic justice. Yeah, it really came back. It was it really gave the meaning of this is,  there's no such thing as No good deed goes unpunished. It's the one thing he did that was nice.  And then he gets stabbed in the leg, rightfully so for it, but yeah. I 

think another favorite scene was that you saw the polar opposites where,  like it was very easy for Caster to assimilate into Archer's life because he was a criminal and he knew how Archer thought as a cop.

Whereas for Archer, it was hard for him to assimilate as caster because him being a cop. Yeah. And so you saw that divide that it was easy when,  once, caster,  once,  Archer was like stuck as caster, it was hard for him to assimilate and realize he had to stop thinking as a cop. Whereas Castor, he could think as a cop,  or as a criminal, it wasn't as hard for him to do those things, like switch in between, but for Archie it was difficult because all his interactions within the jail cell that they were in was like, he was as the mindset of a cop, which, so it  was, I thought it was very, my, my favorite scene was that when he first goes to prison and you mentioned it earlier is where he has to defend himself because he's about to get beat up and he doesn't know how to interact and he, everyone's looking at him cause he's like Castor Troy and  he's big old baddie and he's thinking about it from a perspective of what a cop would do. 

And he realizes that's not the approach that he has to take from it, because then something would be off. He has to think about it from what would Caster do? And even though he's gut punching himself, he like, he has, he goes, I'm crazy! I'm doing all this weird stuff, which is  maybe out of character, for Caster.

But it seems like it's harder for him to do that. 

I do think there like a cop in that body and he either morally  can't be corrupted in a sense Yea, it was funny 

to watch him like, you said, fighting in the prison but also crying in between hitting people cause it's not who he is That was funny that was  like, he was just like ahhhhh  Like, not who he is I will say though that, that Caster does do a good job in the beginning of assimilating into the role.

But then you see his natural tendencies come out, he's violent,  he does, he's impatient, he kills his boss,  he definitely get, there's red flags of things that he's doing that,  People can see, they just assume that he's being different because of other things, but they can read it.



But doesn't that make him, him also being a man in a position of him wanting to move up and promote, because no one thought that was ever, we're just him wanting to be promoted for I didn't think it 

was, that it was weird, but there were. There were parts like,  Margaret Cho was in this movie, and I think she comments at one point about how he always had to stick up his ass, or sorry, butt, whatever,  and how it's been removed.

So there is definitely a personality shift, but because of the way that he's viewed in that society the only real people who noticed, I would say, were the wife and the daughter. But the daughter didn't care enough to invest. She just thought her dad was being cool, and the wife... Knew something was off, but just didn't  also Know you know we almost completely forgot the other plot line Which was he had a dead son caster troy filled a son  Yeah  Thing so basically Sean archer son was killed by caster troy Which is find out that caster, Troy has a son With this girl that he had been seeing and that girl ends up dying.

So then Archer ends up raising The 

boy like that it comes full circle, but that's the whole beef between the two That's the whole reason why he wants Castor for the death of his son And so which brings us to the next point is that are there any weak areas in this 

film? Okay for ignoring science  So science isn't real guys. 

And obviously technology is, sure it's advanced enough for them to replace each other's faces. And sure, you could totally, there's one point  where Castor Troy, Nicolas Cage doesn't have his face because it's been put on, it's been put on by,  by Sean Archer. He's just chilling there without a face and he's talking.

And I really don't think that's possible.  I don't know. I feel like he would, he wouldn't be able to not have a covering because of the bacteria that could get in to your fucking face. I 

feel like that's a prelude to another one of his characters. Ghost Rider. Oh 

yeah. That's, it does feel like that.

But. I would say that,  if we're going to talk about weak areas of the movie, I think the sun plot was definitely an odd one. It's weak. I would have been fine without it. If you can pull something out of the movie and it doesn't really change it for you, then, yeah.

Everything else about the movie was so fun that I... I think they tried to add that to make it more ground, like grounded, make his character seem more grounded and like why this was so much more important to him, but I didn't particularly buy it. I didn't think that mattered. I also  didn't,  what else ended up happening?

What is the part? What other plot holes are there?  The fact that all these people would be sent just to hunt Caster Troy, that seems insane too. I understand he's a terrorist. Also, 

actually, the biggest plot point,  or weak areas, which could consider a plot point for me, was that  Caster Troy murders  the... 

The tech group that created the technology for removing faces and planning.  He murders  the technicians and the people who create the technology and everyone associated with them.  And just no one  tends to re up and find out. What ends up happening and 

nobody else, quote unquote, knows about the technology or that he traded faces 'cause they were trying to keep it private, which sure are fine.

It's secret. But why would you keep all the people who know the secret in one spot where they could all die that easily? Yes. So that 

and by fire, Yeah. And then there and after it happened, there was no follow up, no internal investigation. No one's oh, this body's missing,  The next day,  there was no follow up. 

They had no idea. Yeah, it was like, oh the  body is gone.  They just chalked it up oh it's, And then the castor is up and running... He's in prison.  But the archer is like up and running. No one thought it was fishy. That he 

was gone for a while, yeah  nobody  thought it was weird.

I do think a plot hole would be to the wife, I feel like losing your son, especially with how much he held on to it is such a traumatic experience. And something they both have talked about multiple times.  When he is, when castor Troy is in Shawn Archer's body, he doesn't know the day of the kid's funeral. 

And when he tries to leave. And the wife's like where are you going? We have to go to the she doesn't clock that as something that's suspicious or weird. I feel like that is  something that I would even be like are they losing their minds cause that's a little odd that you don't remember this very big day.

I also think that at the point where I guess they're fa What happened to the bomb? I can't even remember what happened to the 

bomb. Oh! Another plot point, or a weak area, is that the bomb that Castor Troi sets, he goes back and disarms it to become a hero. Oh, 

that's right!  That's right. So the whole moving part of that film then becomes, shifts from the bomb to a face off. 

Title included.  Also, he has a 

brother, but his brother doesn't, clearly he's the dominant personality, and his brother is not. His brother's just like a weird, sociopath. I don't know. 

So it becomes like this,  those were some weak areas, but it come becomes like a pivotal shift from like him instead of using it, like once he has a taste of the power of the F B I, he then realizes that he could use that as a reach and they can become legit.

From organized crime to like, use the government 

Yeah. To move in their terrorism. , but he also has such a hard on for,  Sean Archer, because, I guess he's in his body or whatever. He also so hyper-focused on destroying his life. and, killing him like I don't know why he wouldn't just choose to divorce his wife, or do all they things while in this other body and then move forward with his own plot but i guess he wanted to really stick it to him by sticking it to his wife which 

he did stick it to which he did stick it to the wife and who knows if she, if they had protection yeah 

I don't know, that's a whole other plot hole we don't need to think about I will say one plot hole Which, or not even Paul, a weak area.

I wouldn't even say it was weak. It was weird.  Was the baby mama of Castor Troy  at one point she kisses her brother  straight on the lips and it is for a long period of time.  And in, I remember looking over to my brother and saying, are they, aren't they related?  It was Vic and then it turns out they were and I  was just weird I'm like, okay I know some families do that.

But like  I feel as though it's a peck one families do that it's never like a This was a definitely longer than five. It was a passionate kiss more than five, Mississippi's It was weird. 

So there is that going 

on and he just so willingly died For you know when his house stopped for love for the first sister, which great But still was yeah, that was just interesting  And she just so willingly was a willing to help him and I guess he didn't really have any other options but  yeah, and 

53

That was just the 

people that we could acknowledge that were at some point in the movie.  Yeah, there's so many people, so 

many explosions. Yeah, so those were the people, the count of like people that were on screen  murdered. There was probably a lot more off screen deaths that occurred as well.  So that was my death counter while watching.

It was like 53 confirmed deaths for the, for this movie.

Again, there's techno weak areas. There were a lot, but the good parts outweigh the weak areas  for this movie. There was a lot of great things about the movie. 

Yeah, there were a lot of good things about the movie,  that I enjoyed.

I,  I enjoyed it overall. I thought it was a fun experience. I thought I wouldn't be interested in it just because the trailer,  the opposite effect of Vampire's Kiss made it seem like it was something else more interesting than it ended up being, in my personal opinion. This movie, like the trailer, did not seem great.

And then I watched  the movie and it. Yeah, cause the 

trailer was like, trailer showed you exactly what you're getting, and you watched the movie and it was exactly that. So I was perfectly fine, and...  It was more than what I was expecting from like a movie that was made in the 90s. I thought, we were gonna get another...

Like conair time of situation from Nick Cage. Yeah, 

I thought I was not entirely certain  I knew what was gonna happen and it yeah, I was pleasantly surprised. Do you have your reviews that you're gonna 

read out? Yeah, so we're gonna move on to our next part of  This podcast where we're gonna read reviews from users who Gave a review and a rating of the movie  So we're gonna go ahead and do that.

We each do two. So I'm gonna go ahead and start So my first one's gonna be from Sierra. Face off opens up with a child murder, followed immediately by a plane chase, and somehow neither of these scenes are even in the top 10 craziest moments of the film.  Three and a half stars.  

Solid. Let me tell mine real quick. 

I have to agree, cause a lot of crazy things happened in this film. That you could give it a 

rating. Yeah.  Mine is from Alexi. And  they gave it four and a half,  stars. And they said there's not a second in this film where I'm not completely convinced that Nicolas Cage,  Slash John Travolta is wearing John Travolta slash Nicolas Cage's face. 

And can you just see how just confusing that sentence is 

alone? Correct. And to be honest, at some point it was hard to distinguish the two because both actors essentially had to play. They were playing two characters essentially. And so that I have to give kudos because that is demanding.  They both 

did really well.

I felt like they kept it,   up with one another. Yeah, 

it literally,  they not only had to play the character that they initially had signed on to, signed on for, but they also had to study the opposite character. So I'm feeling like he had to either stay,  study. They both had to study the other character, which that's a lot.

And they both did it very well for this film. 

Yeah, they did. 

I agree.  And so goes onto my next.  Reviews gonna be from Ghost Dinosaur. I love when Caster as Archer gives his daughter the switchblade and then reclines in the chair like, I'm killing this parenting stuff. Yeah. Three 

stars. I'm doing great. I just gave her a weapon and I told her how to use it.

Yeah. Essentially he's you know what? It's like having a Tamagotchi. He's yeah, I'm just giving it food, giving it, water. I'm killing it. Apparently he's 

doing better than Alexis in Schitt's Creek because she killed six of them.  Mine is,  from Matthew Noble and he gave it four stars and he quotes one of the,   one of the lines from the movie that says, I'm not me, I'm me, as if anyone would understand that.

And then he says,  Cage gets to play Travolta, Travolta gets to play Cage, and the result is so knowingly ridiculous and hyperbolic that it may as well be an opera with handguns. Some serious pacing issues and obvious stuntmen keep face off from approaching the quality of Wu's Hong Kong output, but this is a compulsive action cinema nevertheless.

The fact that it came out in the same month as Con Air both astounds and terrifies me.  

That was an interesting fact, that it came out that same month. 

Yeah, I could not, I would not have believed that. Cause that was two very different,  action levels, for films. And this one was just really well done.

So he did a great job. And Nick 

Cage did not have an accent  

in this one. We don't know what's going on with your accent, Cage. Please write us and tell us what's happening. 

So what would you write this one? 

Am I giving, is it out of 5? Yeah, out of 5 stars. I'll give it a 4. I think it's actually probably my favorite Nicolas Cage film that we've watched so far, that I hadn't already seen.

I'm not counting Moonstruck, cause I had already seen that movie, 

I would give it a 4 as well, because this, you give, I feel like when you give Nic Cage another actor on same caliber for him, to work off of Like it creates magic and he has that. And this one you're asking him to do exactly the same thing.

Yeah. Which you not only have to study your own role, but the opposite role as well.  It's like Pandora's box and so that's just crazy. And 

also he, IT movies can be absurd. Not to sound like I have been super critical of them. We're being not believable, but obviously movies can be absurd. They can be about crazy stuff.

This is a great example of something being not possible in the way that it was shown, maybe down the line, who knows? But it's definitely not possible in 1997 in the way that they portrayed it and it's bananas, but it was done well. So it was.  An enjoyable movie yeah and it was a movie that is enjoyable and is well done like  you know there's some movies I don't they can't sell it because they're not really you know, putting in the effort to sell it and I think it's a great example of Nicholas Cage going real crazy and it working out to his benefit.



And you got John Trovolta , who's just as who as, 

Just as crazy and works out to his benefit as well. I feel like they both knew they had to be completely insane in order for, to completely,   devote themselves to these characters for it to work. And they were 

right.

. So any,  final words? I 

guess on that note, I'm a vampire. No, I'm kidding. 

I lost my wife. Alright, and with that's going to conclude this episode. And we'll catch you in the next one. Bye!

 📍 Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Second Emulation, where we explored the latest in pop culture, movies, TV shows, and anime. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe to the podcast on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app, and leave us a rating and review to help us reach more listeners. And don't forget to follow us on social media for even more pop culture content and to stay up-to-date on all the latest news and releases. As always, we welcome your feedback and suggestions for future episodes. So until next time, keep on Emulating and stay tuned for more exciting content.