John Woo's Best English-Language Movie Is A '90s Sci-Fi Masterpiece

In the '90s, Nicolas Cage, before he faced off against "The Wicker Man" or donned the mask in the brilliant "Spider-Noir," reached supreme action star status, and three absolute gems helped him get there. In 1996, he starred opposite Sean Connery in Michael Bay's brilliant break-in movie, "The Rock," followed by 1997's high-flying boomfest, "Con Air." Rounding things off, though, was a film that ventured into realms of ridiculousness leagues ahead of those films, and the world lapped it up regardless. Starring opposite John Travolta, Cage made an appearance as a dude, playing a dude, disguised as another dude with their face in John Woo's slow-motion, action-packed classic, "Face/Off." 

"Face/Off" was the third English-language movie from Woo, and the second collaboration with Travolta after the grossly overlooked "Broken Arrow" that had him at his most maniacal. The film cast Cage as world-class terrorist Castor Troy, who goes up against his longtime nemesis, FBI agent Sean Archer (Travolta), in a shootout that ends with the former threatening a bomb that's set to go off in Los Angeles in a few days.

What's the best course of action to locate the explosive? Obviously to use highly advanced technology to let Archer go undercover, wearing Troy's face. From here, a wonderfully Woo-centric film unfolds, loaded with people diving across the screen with guns in both hands while doves fly in slow motion. None of it makes sense, and yet it still stands as one of the greatest action flicks of the late '90s.

With a budget of $80 million, "Face/Off" raked in an impressive $246 million, putting the movie at number 15 in the worldwide box office for 1997. Audiences were all in on Cage and Travolta swapping faces, and critics looked past the nonsense as well. Standing on Rotten Tomatoes with a near-perfect score of 93%, Joe Morgenstern of the Wall Street Journal deemed it a "gorgeously shot, repetitively violent, occasionally repellent, sometimes silly and consistently trashy fantasy." Martyn Glanville of the BBC also praised Woo's big boom-fest that ends in boats and birds, saying, "the film succeeds in overcoming its implausibilities because director Woo offers such a tantalizing package."

Even with all the gunfights, carefully placed explosions, and unnecessary violence involving futuristic prisons and runway chase scenes, perhaps the biggest selling point was seeing Cage and Travolta act opposite one another. Entering truly unhinged territory at some points, both bring their A-game to meet the madness.

Todd McCarthy of Variety said, "watching John Travolta and Nicolas Cage square off and literally exchange roles brings back the old-fashioned pleasure of astutely judged movie star pairings in a major way." That explains why the gods of bonkers action movies have given the green light to making a "Face/Off" sequel that's currently in development.

If you thought that seeing this one wild parlor trick was enough, well, Hollywood has gone to great lengths to show it to you again. Since 2019, attempts have been made to give us a brand-new "Face/Off" film, first with a brand-new cast, and most recently by bringing Cage and Travolta back into the identity-swapping action.

In 2019, Paramount revealed it was working on a remake of "Face/Off," more than two decades after the original. Writer Oren Uziel, who penned "22 Jump Street" and "The Cloverfield Paradox," was tasked with writing the new film before plans were eventually scrapped. By 2021, plans had shifted to bringing the movie's original stars back into the fold, with "Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire" and "The Guest" director Adam Wingard down to helm the project. That kind of work under a director's belt really felt like a great fit for the follow-up film and whatever it would entail, particularly when it involved co-writing the movie with Simon Barrett, who successfully collaborated with Wingard in the past.

Unfortunately, though, cogs in the movie-making machine weren't turning as smoothly as they should've by February of this year. After four years of tussling with the project, it was revealed that Wingard was abandoning it entirely. Since then, none have filled the spot by Wingard and maybe there's a reason that's the case. In the end, we might just have to face the fact that, even after all these years, nothing can top Woo's original masterpiece.