One of my favorite movies of all time!

landry_p2000

I was cruising through my dvd collection last night for something to watch, at about 9:00 or so, and BAM! It hit me. You haven't watched "Face Off" for a long time. I grabbed it and popped it in. Man I forgot how good of a movie this is. Not only did it have action out the a$$, but it also had a deeply involved story line. You felt the pain that Agent Sean Archer went through, and you also felt the lunatic Castor Troy's insane outlook on life. He just flat out didn't give a f*ck. That made for an excellent bad guy.

The switching of the faces also showed the versatility that Cage and Travolta posses as some of the top actors, being able to completely switch the roles they were playing, and make you believe that they were the same person with a different face

This is by far one of the most entertaining and enjoyable movies I have watched in a while. True enough there were some flaws with the voices, but I can look over that for sheer enjoyment of this film. Just putting that out there for all to know. If you have this one, and haven't seen it for a while, pop it in and I promise you will be entertained. Hmmmmm......maybe Gladiator tonight..... :cool:

landry_p2000

Hmmm....I need Micah to get this one going.

Micah Cohen

Huh. Back in the day, when I was, you know, a contributing member, I compiled the DVD reviews from the lamented Polk Newspaper, with their jump-to-demo-scene listings, which at the time was sort of **** innovative (don't want none of that, now do we?) and made a page of them accessible from the loudspeaker product pages on the Polk website. Where'd you hide it, Justin?

Anyway, FACE OFF is a stupid movie. STUPID. But... It showcased some interesting acting (each actor playing the other actor could be among the best acting of each of these actors' careers... Got that?), a cool new director (for America, I mean, in that John Woo was just bringing his HK style to America for the first time), AND... And it had a helicously great 5.1 soundtrack, from what I recall.

So, dumb dumb dumb. But, great demo disc. (Altho I do not recall which scenes we highlighted because my page of DVD demos has disappeared into the background of the new Polk website... Oh well. So much for making it easy for you. So much for suggesting cool stuff to listen to. So much for helping the customer out... Christ.)

MC

landry_p2000

There we go. Oh well, atleast we do agree on the acting.

Micah Cohen

But it's not real "acting." It's like Nic Cage "acts like" John Revolta, and visa versa. They had fun mimicing the tics and personalities of each other - you can sort of tell that they are friends in real life and spend time together. I bet they cracked up on the set of this movie more than once together. That's sort of fun to watch.

So, it works to an extent. A small extent. It's a dumb movie with a kick **** DVD sound design.

MC

landry_p2000

Micah Cohen wrote:

Anyway, FACE OFF is a stupid movie. STUPID. But... It showcased some interesting acting (each actor playing the other actor could be among the best acting of each of these actors' careers... Got that?),
MC

Did you eat paint chips as a child? You just pulled a Rick James on me. Good friends or not, it took some skills to pull this one off. Other than the surgery I think this was a good movie. The surgical procedure is not believable at all.
Dvd demo, very good. PQ not great at all. Entertaniment, very good. I like JT in Swordfish as well.

Ron-P

And here I could hardly make it though the movie, once.

landry_p2000

Different strokes for different folks Ron.

Micah Cohen

Good acting (in fact, GREAT acting) is Nic Cage in LEAVING LAS VEGAS. (I don't have a "great acting" example for John Travolta... "Welcome Back Kotter"?)

Fun mimicking your friend's stereotyped personality and physical mannerism is just having fun mimicking your friend's mannerisms. Don't confuse the two.

I mean, it's a watchable flick, man. It's John Woo doing his amazing slo-mo bullet dance. I dig that! But it's not a great film, and that ain't great acting. Any stand up comedian can mimic both actors quite well. They were just having fun, man.

MC

shack

Trivolta...who cares....

Cage....Does is seem to anyone that he plays EXACTLY the same character in every movie he is in? Different movies, different plots, different names...but it just seems he is the same person every time. Sort of like the directors try to figure out a way to have the character become Cage rather than Cage becoming the character.

bobman1235

Bill Simmons of ESPN just mentioned htis movie.

Bill Simmons wrote:

For instance, at a friend's house watching football last Sunday, my friend Dave Dameshek and I were trying to figure out the most ridiculous scene from "Face Off." Our friend Ace has a theory that they came up with the title before anyone wrote the script, like some movie exec told two writers, "Okay, the movie is called 'Face Off,' we start filming in two weeks, and Travolta and Cage are signed on ... I need a script by Monday." That really might have been what happened, so it's not like we're arguing about "The Godfather" here. But when you consider that it featured two huge stars (at the time), and it did pretty well at the box office, it's one of the most astounding cable movies to watch after the fact. Although 'Shek makes an excellent point: You can't argue about how ludicrous the premise is, only because we accept the premise simply by watching the movie. We knew going in that Travolta and Cage would eventually switch faces, we accepted it and that was that.

With that said, I thought the most ridiculous scene was when Cage's character wakes up from a coma with his face missing, so he uses the hospital phone to call one of his buddies to help him get Travolta's face. I just don't think it's possible to make a phone call if there's no skin on your face and you don't have lips. Call me crazy. 'Shek argued that the most ridiculous scene was the ending, when Travolta foils Cage and nearly gets shot to death, and he goes into the hospital and they save him, and they give him his old face back, and then the movie ends with him heading home to see his wife ... and she's on the computer and seems totally surprised that he's home. As though she's like, "Oh, wait, THIS was the day you were coming home from the hospital with your new face after you saved the world? I thought it was tomorrow!" (It's much funnier when 'Shek does it with his Pittsburgh accent, but whatever.) And you know what? He might be right.

okiepolkie

Shack,

I went through that exact same conversation with some other guys after we watched Lord of War. You are right, he is the same in almost every movie.
Overall, I like him, or at least I've liked most of the movies he has been in. It may be more that I like the movies as a whole, but could live with someone else playing his roles.

Demiurge

shack wrote:

Trivolta...who cares....

Cage....Does is seem to anyone that he plays EXACTLY the same character in every movie he is in? Different movies, different plots, different names...but it just seems he is the same person every time. Sort of like the directors try to figure out a way to have the character become Cage rather than Cage becoming the character.

Adaptation.

shack

I guess Cage is like Eastwood. He is the character. So the question is he a great actor or is he just good at "adapting" HIMSELF into the movie?

IMO a great actor is one who BECOMES the character. Maybe they are few and far between.

landry_p2000

shack wrote:

Trivolta...who cares....

Cage....Does is seem to anyone that he plays EXACTLY the same character in every movie he is in? Different movies, different plots, different names...but it just seems he is the same person every time. Sort of like the directors try to figure out a way to have the character become Cage rather than Cage becoming the character.

Yep, he does seem to play the same guy, that is why I liked seeing him play as a lunatic. His character usually is a sad looking, low key, guy with a confused expression on his face.

Demiurge

shack wrote:

I guess Cage is like Eastwood. He is the character. So the question is he a great actor or is he just good at "adapting" HIMSELF into the movie?

IMO a great actor is one who BECOMES the character. Maybe they are few and far between.

Adaptation is the name of the movie he's in that's unlike anything he's ever doen.

aaharvel

the movie would've been simply O.K. if they would have left out the Travolta adopting his enemy's kid crap. Plus- WHAT IS IT WITH THAT SLIDING YOUR HAND DOWN THE FACE OF A CHILD CRAP? Looks like something a pedophile would do. Oh well, I digress.

Decent movie to watch if you're bored and drinking something stiff.