Harbour Highlights: Face/Off
18 138 mins
18 138 mins
“It's like looking in a mirror, only not.”
Welcome to Harbour Highlights, a series of cult and classic films, handpicked by the staff of Harbour Lights. For August, Kieran takes us back to 1997 for John Woo’s action classic Face/Off.
Having conquered Hong Kong cinema with films such as The Killer and Hard Boiled, Woo brought his signature style to Hollywood with Hard Target and Broken Arrow. But it’s 1997’s Face/Off that proved his English-language works could match his early films. Based around a brilliantly absurd premise – what if an FBI agent and a terrorist had to swap faces ? – Woo brings out all the pulpy fun and adds unbelievably stylish action with all the slow-mo gun play and signature doves you’d expect.
Reuniting with his Broken Arrow star John Travolta and teaming him up with Nicolas Cage, an actor hitting his OTT action star peak (Con Air was still in the top five at the box office when this was released), Woo’s Face/Off allowed both to play hero and villain to great effect. Hailed as an instant classic, with Empire Magazine calling it “the best action movie ever made”, Face/Off remains a ridiculous amount of fun, especially on the big screen.