Face/Off

Distributed by
Pioneer LDCE

Cat.no: PLFEC 37271

Cert: 18

Running time: 133 minutes

Sides: 3 (CLV)

Year: 1997

Pressing: 1998

Chapters: 40 (14/16/10)

Sound: Dolby Surround

Widescreen: 2.35:1

Price: £29.99

Extras : None

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Director:

John Woo

Cast:

John Travolta
Nicolas Cage
Joan Allen
Gina Gershon
Allesandro Nivola
Dominique Swain
Nick Cassavetes
Harve Presnell
Colm Feore

Anyone who's sat down and watched this in full screen on video will know that it's one of those 2.35:1 movies unwatchable in any other form. Here, though, beautifully transferred in all its widescreen glory, Face/Off is a real treat. An original screenplay by Mike Werb and Michael Colleary happily landed in the lap of John Woo, an unknown quantity as far as the two screenwriters were concerned but the perfect director for what they'd written.

This might be Woo's third theatrical feature Stateside, but it's really the first to near the quality of his better Hong Kong movies. Even its title Face/Off recalls a major theme from both The Killer (1989) and Hard Boiled (1992) - the two adversaries who bond in a stalement staring down the barrels of one another's guns. Travolta as an FBI man is determined to catch Cage, a ruthless master criminal responsible for killing Travolta's young son. In a ludicrous but emotionally effective neo-science fictional conceit, Travolta borrows Cage's face in a literal face off to enter a prison as Cage and extract the whereabouts of a soon-to-be detonated bomb from Cage's inmate brother.

Unfortunately for the FBI man, the criminal comes out of his coma and steals the FBI man's face, leaving the former stuck in prison while the latter goes off to sleep with his wife Allen (The Ice Storm) and oggle his teenage daughter Swain (who played the title role in Adrian Lyne's Lolita). The FBI man must escape from prison and find a way to reveal his nemesis' true identity (all traces of the covert op face swap having been destroyed by the villain). Woo, arguably the world's greatest action director, pulls out all the stops in his choreography, yet never at the expense of the characters: while the result is high on both bullets and body count, it also packs an emotional wallop that may surprise those unfamiliar with Woo's Hong Kong canon.

If the disc boasts no extras - not even a trailer - in terms of the movie itself it gets everything right. Virtually no shot fails to employ the letterbox frame and if a few minor details suffer from slight picture side loss, (an early computer screen springs to mind), most of the time all the essential details can be seen. So no qualms there.

The sound is a joy, although this is one of those movies where quiet, subtle passages (like the opening carousel assassination attempt with its unsettling, edgy musical score) are followed by extremely loud, noisy passages (the airport car/plane chase and warehouse fight a couple of scenes earlier) that mean that you may well find yourself constantly turning up then turning down the volume so as not to annoy other members of the household.

As to aside breaks, they're beautifully chosen in nice, unobtrusive places. Whoever decided exactly where these should go deserves full marks.

All of which means that, although this platter doesn't pull out all the stops it might have done, it remains nonetheless a more than satisfactory PAL laserdisc of a terrific movie which deserves to sell well.

Film: 5/5
Picture: 5/5
Sound: 5/5

Review copyright © Jeremy Clarke, 1998.