FACE / OFF (75)

Directed by: John Woo

Starring: Nicolas Cage, John Travolta, Joan Allen

The Pitch: A cop is forced to assume the identity of his criminal nemesis, including an exchange of faces through a hi-tech form of plastic surgery.

Theo Sez: "Operatic" is an overused word - and should probably never be used at all by those, like me, who have only a sketchy knowledge of opera - but it's the obvious choice for the extravagance in this gleefully out-there mix of THE KILLER and EYES WITHOUT A FACE, teetering on risibility then triumphantly transcending it. The key to its success is that, like the song numbers in old musicals, its action sequences are a reflection - a sublimation into motion and rhythm - of its characters' passions and desires, which is why for example the opening burst of action just feels generic and not terribly interesting (nothing is at stake yet, we haven't met these people - it's just action) : despite his admirers' superlatives Woo's "choreographed" shoot-outs have always seemed as empty as the first half-hour or so of this movie, which is what makes second viewing rather a disappointment (yes, it was originally rated 80+). It only really starts to work when the characters' inner lives (very much the mot juste, given the plot) are revealed, powered along by the determination to make everything larger-than-life - the hatred, the sentimentality, even the exaggerated repressiveness of the prison where our hero languishes. The effect is equivalent to something like THE SOUND OF MUSIC, a world where everything is pitched just a notch beyond what feels comfortable : it seems ludicrous at first then, so long as you allow yourself to be immersed, it takes over. Unfortunately the script makes THE SOUND OF MUSIC look like a model of tightness - our hero doesn't really have a plan, and exposing his fake self proves disappointingly easy (you hope for some clever bit of business enabling his wife to get a sample of her fake husband's telltale blood, but in the end she just jabs him with a needle while he's asleep). It's an action movie in which everyone behaves as seriously as if it were high art - and, occasionally, its feverish intensity and the sheer vivid force of its loopy, straight-faced melodrama leave you feeling giddy, breathless, even on the brink of tears ; then the spell is broken and it's just an action movie again.