Face/Off (1997)

Director: John Woo

Cast: John Travolta, Nicolas Cage, Joan Allen, Gina Gershon

Have I Seen It Before: Never. I always suspected that there was a reason for that.

Did I Like It: The virtues of the film are encapsulated in its poster. Take two movie stars—and both Travolta and Cage were at the top of their star-power post Pulp Fiction (1994) and The Rock (1996)* and allow them to play both the virtuous (possibly to the point of insanity) hero and the scene-chewing villains. If only the Batman series could have offered Michael Keaton that same deal, he might never have hung up the cowl.

And then there’s two and a half hour beyond that pitch where you’ve got to fill. Perhaps the delineation between Sean Archer and Castor Troy isn’t all that well defined, ultimately. Both of the main characters seem to randomly find a moment or two in the course of day to have a complete emotional meltdown, and never quite for the reasons you might suspect. Or any reasons. At all.

This might be forgiven, if not completely ignored, if it weren’t for the fact that the action movie surrounding this conceit is a little pulse-less. It’s not even remotely as innovative as Woo’s efforts before being swallowed whole by Hollywood**. It’s not even the kind of guilty pleasure one might get from watching Michael Bay’s bloated music videos of the era. There are plenty of films that came to exist merely because it was a good business deal/ego-trip for the parties involved, but few that feel so obviously mired in that initial decision and no others.

*I am by no means equating these two films as a matter of quality, just in their collective ability to allow Cage and Travolta to make whatever film they wanted.

**We all—Woo included—could have enjoyed a lot less confusion over the next several years if he could have gone back to Hong Kong before Mission: Impossible II (2000).

Hard Boiled (1992)

Director: John Woo

Cast: Chow Yun-fat, Tony Leung Chiu-wai, Teresa Mo, Philip Chan

Have I Seen It Before: Never.

Did I Like It: How frenetic is too frenetic? Because honestly, there was a long stretch of this where things were moving so fast I wasn’t sure who was working for whom and who was betraying whom, and just how much trouble they might be in because they happen to be working for or betraying certain people. If that’s a satire of witless complexity in American action movies of the time, then bravo. The film played me like a pointedly American fiddle*.

But then the film moves on to a one of the most breathless second halves of any movie, ever. I’m imagining it is this part (pretty much after every main character enters the hospital) with which people have been so enamored for so long. It might feel like a nearly calamitous tone shift when a bevy of defenseless patients are gunned down, even after the equally ruthless Alan (Leung) and Mad Dog (Philip Kwok) declare a truce over that very same issue. It makes me feel sad, when nearly every inch of film at this point in the story is designed to thrill and amuse. There might be a statement about the fundamentally destructive nature of violence in there, but the film forgets them just as soon as they dispose of them.

I enjoyed the experience of watching the film, for the most part, but as I just spent two paragraphs complaining about it, I wonder if I truly did enjoy it. I really want to say yes, because those parts I did enjoy were rapturous, but it is a liking with some severe reservation, and those reservations only come about when I think about the film for longer than a few minutes.

*Or clarinet, if that helps.

Mission: Impossible II (2000)

Director: John Woo

Cast: Tom Cruise, Dougray Scott, Thandie Newton, Ving Rhames

Have I Seen it Before: Yeah.

Did I Like It: The Mission: Impossible series is improbably after twenty-five years of featuring Tom Cruise tempting death by jumping and hanging off things. 

But it hasn’t always been that way. I have always had a soft spot for <Mission: Impossible (1996)>, but completely understand when others say the plot is overly complex at best, downright convoluted at worst. Trying to course correct for that criticism, we are then offered this film.

All the ingredients are right. Tom Cruise—for all of his problems—has never appeared disinterested in making good movies. John Woo was at the peak of his action filmmaking, and had even proven his aptitude with more American fare like Hard Target (1993), Broken Arrow (1996), and Face/Off (1997). Certainly not intellectual fare, but crowd pleasing. He may have been the wrong choice for this series, but the thought that he wouldn’t generate some degree of memorable spectacle was a good idea, on paper. 

But nothing quite came together, one assumes in the hopes of offering up counter programming to its predecessor. It probably doesn’t help that the whole film centers around preventing a super flu outbreak, which today feels off, but I don’t think my opinion of the movie has changed much at all in the last twenty years.

Cruise has two modes throughout the film: smirking and concerned smirking. Maybe he was looking for a break after the marathon production that was Eyes Wide Shut (1999), but he’s rusty as a movie star here. The plot is warmed over Hitchcockian jewel thief material. The story is credited to Star Trek scribes Ronald D. Moore and Brannon Braga, but I always seem to remember that eventually credited screenwriter Robert Towne saying he cribbed the whole thing directly from Notorious (1946), but a quick search now indicates they came up with action sequences first, and Towne was later called in to string together a story. Not sure if this is patient zero for this practice, but that kind of screenwriting is happening more and more lately, and for my money it is the key problem in action films today.

This one just didn’t come together in any way, sadly. But don’t worry, the series—nor Cruise—has made a stinker since. One wishes that I could say the same about Woo (he hasn’t made much in the last twenty years), and poor Dougray Scott was right on the precipice of having Hugh Jackman’s life, but for this film.