I won’t parrot the virtues of Face/Off 27 years after the fact. Suffice it to say, the good stuff is so good that I’d never noticed before how little sense the plot makes — and I’m not talking about the face-switching premise.
The opening flashback shows Castor Troy (Nicholas Cage) setting up a sniper rifle on a hill overlooking a carousel that FBI agent Sean Archer (John Travolta) is riding with his six-year-old son Michael (Myles Jeffrey). Castor shoots, but the bullet goes through Archer and kills Michael.
Both Sean and Michael fall to the ground. Sean crawls toward his dead son and takes his sweet time grieving over his lifeless body while Castor looks on — and the editing makes it seem that Castor has a clear view of the aftermath.
For some reason, Castor took his shot while Sean was a (slowly) moving target, but now that Archer is the proverbial sitting duck, he refrains from pulling the trigger a second time.
Is Castor stunned that he killed a child? Doubtfully. First of all, Castor is a stone-cold psychopath. And second, if Michael’s wellbeing had truly been a concern for Castor, he would have never shot at Sean while he was holding the boy in his arms.
Was Castor’s plan all along to kill Michael and let Sean live? With a trick shot, to boot? Not at all. During the climax, Castor will admit, “Your son was an accident. I wanted to kill you.” So why didn’t you? It’s not like you didn’t have ample chance to fire a second round.
Anyway, six years after the botched assassination attempt, Sean is the head of “a covert anti-terrorism team.” He has his knickers all in a bunch because they can’t pinpoint where in the world Castor is.
Finally, word comes in that “a jet was just chartered. Anderson Airfield. Guess who paid the bill in cash? [Castor’s younger brother] Pollux Troy.” If he used cash, how do you know it was him? “Put one of our people on that plane,” Sean demands.
When we get to the runway, it turns out that the flight attendant is an undercover fed. That’s mighty efficient for a unit that, as Sean complained just two minutes ago, is so secret “that when we snap our fingers, nothing happens.”
Now, how does Castor afford private jets, gold-plated handguns, solid-gold cash clips, and a stylish wardrobe? Terrorists don’t do it for the money. In fact, it’s not a figure of speech to say that they’d do it for free. You couldn’t pay them enough not to do it. Terrorists are mad; Castor’s just crazy.
Moreover, while the movies have taught us that the authorities don’t negotiate with terrorists, it’s actually the other way around. Terrorists don’t negotiate with the authorities because that would kind of ruin the element of surprise.
Castor is not your garden variety terrorist, though. He’s a terrorist-for-hire. Some “militia nutjobs” offered him $10 million to place a bomb, to be detonated at a later date, at the LA Convention Center. This raises more questions than answers.
For instance, once Castor has ostensibly died, Sean declares the case closed. Uh, what do you mean, “case closed”? What about the people who hired Castor in the first place? Shouldn’t you be going after them now?
Then follows the face-swapping stuff, which unfolds surprisingly plausibly. Only one thing bothers me. I know they gave Sean “an abdominoplasty” to “take care of those love handles,” but how did they fatten Castor up?
Also, Sean makes a big deal about wanting his scar (from when Castor shot him) back after it’s all over. Castor, of course, would not be surprised by the scar; would he, however, notice if it weren’t there? Wouldn’t that have been a neat way to give Castor away, especially to Sean’s wife?
And there’s more — I could go on about Erehwon Prison, which is a clever little reference until you spot it; if you do, you know it has absolutely nothing to do with the work being referenced —, but I’m just splitting hairs.
If anything, it’s a testament to Cage’s and Travolta’s tour-de-force performances and John Woo’s action set pieces (the unerring Roger Ebert wrote about “spectacular stunts in unlikely settings.” What’s spectacularly unlikely, in retrospect, is that the settings where these stunts occur are real, physical places and not computer-generated, green screen-projected facsimiles, as is the norm nowadays) that Face/Off has stood the test of time and aged rather well, ubiquitous plotholes be damned.