Face/Off

Director: John Woo

1997 / 138min / 35mm

Woo’s gonzo action blow-out pairs John Travolta and Nicolas Cage—two actors perfectly attuned to their director’s operatic, over the top style—as sworn archnemeses, straight-arrow FBI Special Agent Sean Archer and Castor Troy, the mad criminal genius who’s the bane of Archer’s existence. A series of twists involving a double face transplant results in the men switching their identities and lives—a boon for Most Wanted Troy, but a revoltin’ predicament for Archer—and the movie’s magnificent anti-realist dream logic only flies further out from there. Gravity-defying feats of two-fisted gun fu, a thousand slow-motion doves, and “I could eat a peach for hours,” it’s about as freakily fun as blockbusters get.