104.3Abstract (summary)
So to the plot. Sean Archer (John Travolta) heads a covert American anti - terrorist group in Los Angeles, determined to track down the vile Castor Troy (Nicolas Cage). Six years earlier, while attempting to assassinate Archer, Troy killed Archer's young son, arousing the hero's obsessive vendetta. After Troy plants a bomb in the LA Convention Center, he is trapped at the airport and spectacularly dispatched as he tries to flee; his nerd - genius brother, Pollux (Allesandro Nivola), is taken prisoner. The authorities reason that the only hope of locating the bomb lies with Archer; using his extensive knowledge of Castor's character, Sean must trick Pollux into revealing where the bomb is hidden. Archer's superiors let him in on two shocking secrets: Castor Troy is still alive, but comatose; and a revolutionary medical procedure has made it possible for doctors to remove the terrorist's face (no kidding) and graft it onto Archer (after his own mug has been lasered off and stored in a specimen jar). With great reluctance, Archer agrees to have his face and voice surgically transformed into Troy's so he can join Pollux in the Erewhon high - security penitentiary, an institution that makes Alcatraz look like Girls Town.
Now all this may sound too easy. The trouble arises when Troy emerges from his coma and forces the surgeon to give him Archer's voice and dimple - chinned visage. After he and his gang have torched the secret medical centre and every person who knows about his enemy's mission, Troy pays a visit to the real Archer in prison, explains the situation, and wishes him a happy lifetime of incarceration. He has Pollux released, claiming that he has turned state's witness. Then the vicious criminal steps into Archer's job and marriage. In both situations his carefree manner makes him a more appealing person than the high - strung Archer had been. Now the false "Archer" becomes a national hero by finding and defusing the bomb and by directing massive raids against his terrorist rivals; with the president and the country behind him, he has the world at his fingertips. In desperation, the real Archer escapes from prison and tries to persuade his wife Eve (Joan Allen) that he is her husband and not the man who killed their son...
For Archer, however, the awakening of Christian spirit comes when he descends into Troy's character. As a hardened anti - terrorist, he has unscrupulously threatened to take [Sasha Hassler]'s child if she fails to sell out Troy's gang. As Troy, Archer identifies with her parental love and comes to respect her. He puts his life on the line to protect the mother and child from an assault by "Archer's" police. Sasha later dies saving Troy's life, but it is the new, sensitive Troy for whom she has made this sacrifice, the same man who cradles the dying woman in his arms and pledges to protect their son. While Troy uses Archer's face in order to advance his criminal empire, Archer discovers a new humanity when he becomes Troy. Troy's calculated seduction of Archer's wife and attention to [Jamie] also prove instructive for Archer, correcting his earlier neglect of them.
An Expatriate's Film: Facing Face/Off
Most action flicks are essentially a series of predictable shootouts, strung together by a predictable plot. As with professional wrestling, there seems to be a market for it. But John Woo's new film, Face/Off, takes the genre to a much more stimulating level. An intricate plot, some riveting performances, and a multi - level struggle between good and evil - all this makes for a truly revolutionary film from the Hong Kong director now making his mark in Hollywood. Rest assured, this film contains coarse language and brutal violence, but they have rarely been rendered with such elegance.
AMERICA's modern predominance in the arts - as in science - is in no small measure due to the international genius that sought refuge there. Hollywood especially thrived under the creative power brought by the directors, designers, and performers who fled Nazi Germany. If that generation of expatriate film - makers helped to promulgate the myth of the American Dream, the current influx of international talent brings a critical perspective to it.
John Woo (a.k.a. Wu Hsiang - Fei, Wu Yu - Sheng) was born in China in 1946 but raised in Hong Kong. From 1972 - 93 he directed 23 feature films with such titles as Hard Boiled, The Killer, and Bullet in the Head. Having established himself as a stylist of the gangster film, he made his American debut with the Jean - Claude Van Damme vehicle Hard Target. Woo's fourth feature in the West, Face/Off, is his most successful achievement both commercially and artistically. A superb action film, it provides two perspectives characteristic of an expatriate film - maker trying to find his new footing in Hollywood: his concern with maintaining an integral identity in a radically different world and a critique of American heroics. Because he has not grown up in its midst, an expatriate's detachment is especially welcome when it enlivens a well - worn genre film.
But first, two caveats. Notwithstanding the allure of the title, Canadian audiences should be warned that this film has nothing what - soever to do with hockey. Also, in considering the present argument, the reader should remember that the actual experience of this film is a succession of loud, spectacular chases, fights of gun and fist, and explosions. The verbal and cerebral evidence adduced below are the slivers of mortar between those slick bricks.
And so to the plot. Sean Archer (John Travolta) heads a covert American anti - terrorist group in Los Angeles, determined to track down the vile Castor Troy (Nicolas Cage). Six years earlier, while attempting to assassinate Archer, Troy killed Archer's young son, arousing the hero's obsessive vendetta. After Troy plants a bomb in the LA Convention Center, he is trapped at the airport and spectacularly dispatched as he tries to flee; his nerd - genius brother, Pollux (Allesandro Nivola), is taken prisoner. The authorities reason that the only hope of locating the bomb lies with Archer; using his extensive knowledge of Castor's character, Sean must trick Pollux into revealing where the bomb is hidden. Archer's superiors let him in on two shocking secrets: Castor Troy is still alive, but comatose; and a revolutionary medical procedure has made it possible for doctors to remove the terrorist's face (no kidding) and graft it onto Archer (after his own mug has been lasered off and stored in a specimen jar). With great reluctance, Archer agrees to have his face and voice surgically transformed into Troy's so he can join Pollux in the Erewhon high - security penitentiary, an institution that makes Alcatraz look like Girls Town.
Now all this may sound too easy. The trouble arises when Troy emerges from his coma and forces the surgeon to give him Archer's voice and dimple - chinned visage. After he and his gang have torched the secret medical centre and every person who knows about his enemy's mission, Troy pays a visit to the real Archer in prison, explains the situation, and wishes him a happy lifetime of incarceration. He has Pollux released, claiming that he has turned state's witness. Then the vicious criminal steps into Archer's job and marriage. In both situations his carefree manner makes him a more appealing person than the high - strung Archer had been. Now the false "Archer" becomes a national hero by finding and defusing the bomb and by directing massive raids against his terrorist rivals; with the president and the country behind him, he has the world at his fingertips. In desperation, the real Archer escapes from prison and tries to persuade his wife Eve (Joan Allen) that he is her husband and not the man who killed their son...
Are you still with me?
THE two antagonists' exchange of identities is the film's most original and intriguing premise. Their long confrontation has made each richly familiar with his enemy's personality, so they can plausibly impersonate one another.
Yet each man struggles with his new self. When Archer first sees himself as Troy, he goes berserk and must be restrained and reassured: "You're Sean Archer." But later, when he triumphs in a savage prison brawl, his exultant "I'm Castor Troy!" intermingles manic laughter and weeping - as he intuits how he has changed. For his part, Troy begins to show sensitivity towards Archer's wife and daughter, although his motives are often fuelled by lasciviousness and vengefulness. And when he learns that his nemesis has escaped from prison, Troy becomes as enraged and obsessed as the real Sean Archer.
Each man has carried the other's potential in his own character. Their mutual hatred is based on their own recognition of this mirror relationship. In one showdown they stand on opposite sides of a double mirror, in effect shooting at themselves as they shoot at each other, in an image of metaphysical resonance. The name of the island prison provides another mirror reversal, after Samuel Butler's Utopian novel: Erewhon, which is the reverse of Nowhere. When Archer's "Troy" is sent to prison, he's sent to both Nowhere and to the world of mirror reflection.
The identity theme is replayed as Archer's daughter Jamie (Dominique Swain) attempts to find and express her true self by trying on various grotesque images - punker, valley girl, Marilyn Manson lookalike. Troy is able to read her distress in a way that her real father could not; he explains that she has suppressed her pain at her brother's death by hiding behind others' faces.
The film's casting provides a critique of two of Hollywood's more popular star personae. Nicolas Cage has played primarily virtuous innocents who are capable of rising to the occasion when tested (The Rock, Con Air). His hulkish presence and bovine mien lead to the rustic Raising Arizona and to such light romances as It Could Happen to You, Peggy Sue Got Married, Honeymoon in Vegas, and can occasionally thicken into Wild at Heart and Leaving Las Vegas.
Woo takes greater liberties with John Travolta's persona. For here as in their previous film together, Broken Arrow, Woo imputes an unscrupulous criminality to a persona that has been solidly established as sentimental and virtuous. We have warmed to Travolta as we watched him grow from his high - school rascal days in the Welcome Back, Kotter TV series and Carrie into the sensitive and sentimental man - next - door of Saturday Night Fever, Moment by Moment, Urban Cowboy, and the Look Who's Talking trilogy. He remains attractively eccentric and honourable even amid the excesses of Pulp Fiction and Get Shorty. Later, Travolta seems virtually typecast as the angel in Michael and as the divinely blessed rustic in Phenomenon. Consistent with Travolta's persona of modesty, here Travolta's "Troy" complains about having to wear Archer's (Travolta's) nose, hair, and "this ridiculous chin."
In Face/Off, director Woo reveals a callous viciousness behind both American Hero images. Each actor gets to play his familiar virtue, but each is also given the role of demonic killer. This is an outsider's critical deployment of an American icon (or two) analogous to Sergio Leone's casting of Henry Fonda as the cold - blooded child - killer in Once Upon a Time in the West.
As Woo's title suggests, his main theme is the face and its deceptiveness. Of course, the untrustworthiness of appearances is one of literature's most common and compelling themes. "I don't trust anyone any more," says Eve Archer as she holds her false husband's gun on her real husband. Quite understandable.
Some of the film's richest moments are those where the "real" characters provide an ironic spin to the words or deeds of their apparent selves. For example, it is Troy who silently comforts Eve at her son's grave while she weeps at his having taken the boy away. Archer's "Troy" explains to his cronies that he knows so much about Archer because "I sleep with his wife." Archer's ostensible glee at this remark masks his raging frustration that Troy is indeed sleeping with Eve.
Archer's irony is more straightforward when he (as Troy) confronts Troy's ex - lover Sasha Hassler (Gina Gershon). She recalls how Archer had pressured her to turn on Castor by threatening to take away her son. Realizing the pain he has caused, the disguised Sean tells her: "Whatever happens, I promise: Sean Archer is off your back for good." Seeing her with her son, Adam, he develops a bond with her, and he similarly develops a sense of camaraderie with her brother, the bomb and drug dealing Dietrich Hassler (Nick Cassavetes) as the two battle "Archer" and his police.
The title primarily refers to the truth revealed when the appearance or face comes off. It also refers to the antagonists facing each other - or their sunken selves in the Other. The most dramatic "facings" occur during three frozen stand - offs, guns pointed at each other. The finale is the extravagant five - person standoff in a chapel, the guns establishing a moment of stillness, with white doves flying about the individuals, and Eve Archer frozen in the middle.
Of course, even the deceptiveness of the face can itself be deceptive. Archer's signature expression of love is to caress another's face. We first see him do this with his son Michael, just before the boy dies. He repeats this caress with Eve. But as Troy, Archer must suppress the urge to reach out in the same way to Sasha. And when he runs his fingers over the face of her five - year - old son, he is overwhelmed by the memory of his own; in doing so, he blends his two selves, Archer and Troy. The scene is especially poignant since the child, so much like Archer's, has been fathered by Troy. The touching gesture seems to read the face, but in passing over the surface it expresses a deeper commitment to the person. Here love is expressed through, not by, the face. The downward sweep of Archer's hand across the person's features also connotes a Christian blessing.
WITH a script by Mike Webb and Michael Colleary, the Hong Kong director develops both a Christian and a pagan context for the film. Troy is characterized as satanically evil. His black coat whooshes like an infernal wind when he meets his brother at the LA airport. Troy takes diabolical pleasure from his pursuit of evil, and for him Archer's suburban life is "Hell." His creepy habit of licking women's faces, then inviting them to suck his tongue, makes him appear like the serpent of Genesis, as does his sensual dedication to the peach, here presented as a fruit from the Tree of Experience: "I can eat a peach for hours." In effect, the serpent Troy drives Archer from the suburban paradise he shares with Eve. The Erewhon prisoners are tormented with wall - sized TV images of another lost Eden, the Nature Channel.
The pagan Troy plays at seeming Christian. In his first scene he poses as a priest to plant the bomb, and then fondles a pretty young church chorister. Towards the end, his "Archer" playfully strikes a Christ - like pose in the chapel, and in his final scene he takes part in an even more elaborate passion play.
For Archer, however, the awakening of Christian spirit comes when he descends into Troy's character. As a hardened anti - terrorist, he has unscrupulously threatened to take Sasha's child if she fails to sell out Troy's gang. As Troy, Archer identifies with her parental love and comes to respect her. He puts his life on the line to protect the mother and child from an assault by "Archer's" police. Sasha later dies saving Troy's life, but it is the new, sensitive Troy for whom she has made this sacrifice, the same man who cradles the dying woman in his arms and pledges to protect their son. While Troy uses Archer's face in order to advance his criminal empire, Archer discovers a new humanity when he becomes Troy. Troy's calculated seduction of Archer's wife and attention to Jamie also prove instructive for Archer, correcting his earlier neglect of them.
The last scene in the film is more true in these mythic terms than in phenomenological or psychological ones. While Eve works at her computer, Sean Archer (both face and man) emerges from a dense sun - drenched mist. She and Jamie are ecstatic to have husband and father restored whole to them. In fact, he's an improved Archer; his stony integrity has been tempered by a new warmth. Sean embraces his loved ones, then beckons behind him; Adam steps forward, and Sean asks Eve and Jamie if they will agree to adopt the orphaned boy. With no time for discussion or mixed feelings - this being the last frame - they instantly ooze affection for Castor Troy's son. Aesthetically, the scene is mawkish; psychologically, it rings false.
But thematically it makes sense. The last scene presents a restored Sean Archer, fuller and healthier than he has been, at least since his son's death. But his restoration is complete only when he embraces as his own the son of the Other. In fact, Troy dies without knowing that Sasha bore his son. Because she doesn't know there are two Troys, the vile real one and the virtuous "face," Sasha effectively makes Archer Adam's father.
In extending himself to Sasha, in assuming protective responsibility for her son, Sean finally outgrows a self - centred and destructive fixation on his own loss. That is, he heals in the very terms that Troy has explained to Jamie. In Christian terms, renewal has moved from Heaven onto Earth when Sean lets his Michael give way to Adam. Thus is paradise regained.
Incidentally, we can deduce that Troy and Sasha conceived Adam about the time that he killed angelic Michael. Adam appears quite other - worldly as he stands in the midst of one of the most extraordinary shootouts ever filmed. Unnaturally illuminated and serene, he is bathed in grace as his headphones play "Over the Rainbow," drowning out the sound of gunfire. This mythic weighting justifies the artifice of the final scene.
In addition to its Christian context, Archer's rebirth emphasizes a recent inflection of the Travolta persona. We see "Archer" (Troy) die when "Troy" (Archer) kills him, so there is a genuine resurrection when Archer returns in the same Travolta face that Troy wore when he expired. Of course since Pulp Fiction Hollywood mavens have marvelled at the revival of Travolta's career after the ignominy of unemployment, dubiously relieved by Chains of Gold and The Expert.
This rebirth is a matter of mythopoeia as well as colloquialism. Travolta was cast as someone to be resurrected. In Michael Travolta plays an angel making one of several returns to human form on Earth. Earlier, in Pulp Fiction, the juggled chronology makes the film turn back upon itself so that it closes on its opening scene. This leaves the viewer with an image of the Travolta character alive and heroic, not shot dead on the john, with a paperback in his hands and his shorts at his ankles. This is how Hollywood's sentimental favourite confronts mortality: the plot is rigged so that he's Staying Alive. John Travolta's persona seems always to survive death - by the Grease of God.
In contrast to the Christian associations in the Archer family, the Troy family is characterized in classical or pagan terms. Castor and Pollux were the twin sons of Zeus and Leda, and hence associated with the fall of Troy. They remained famous, especially among warriors and seafarers. As the film develops, the genuine Christian spirit of the Archers overcomes the pagan warriors. When Archer finally conquers Castor Troy, after a sea - chase, he kills him with an arrowhead harpoon. Their final confrontation begins in the Christian chapel and then moves out (as if backward in time) to the sea and the sand.
The twins Castor and Pollux also evoke the astrological sign of Gemini, associated with the split personality. This puts Archer in conflict with the principle of a divided personality, not just with evil. In this light the film is not about the conflict between Good and Evil (as Troy's "Archer" tells Archer when their chapel confrontation begins) but against the equal propensity for good and evil in the single soul. The human condition is ambivalence, not the moral simplistics that normally animate the action film. The two men's ambivalence is imaged in the elemental dialectics of their battles. In their first confrontation, Archer rises into the air in a helicopter to keep Troy's plane on earth. In their last, they engage through combinations of fire and water.
In so fully deploying the classical and Christian mythologies, Director Woo reveals his own Christian upbringing. Where he most clearly expresses his own cultural difference is in the irony with which he treats his stars and the heroic conventions of the genre. He seems positioned both within the American action film and outside it. He exercises it well enough to produce a commercial success, but at the same time he reflects upon the genre, exaggerates it here and there, points it to his personal purposes.
The tension between being in and being out of the narrative frame is prefigured in the scene where Troy plants the bomb. We first hear the "Hallelujah" chorus as if it were part of the film's musical frame - work, perhaps comically expressing the "priest's" exuberance at delivering the bomb. But the music is then revealed to originate within the scene, performed by a church choir at the Convention Center. Troy then "performs" the irony of detachment, when he dances, swears, and fondles the chorister, a behaviour not quite congruent with his priestly uniform. The viewer is similarly poised between two levels of reality at every point that Troy is viewed within "Archer," Archer within "Troy," and Cage and Travolta within either/both.
OF course, this movie's remarkable popularity is due less to its thematic structure than to its infernal explosions, witty action, and balletically choreographed destruction. But like its heroes, it would be dangerous to take the film at face value. As Pollux Troy asks rhetorically, "Is it a crime in this country to exercise the mind?" That could be John Woo defending his indulgence in using the spectacle of the action genre actually to say something thoughtful and culturally analytic.
MAURICE YACOWAR is dean of the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Calgary.
Figures not transcribed Consult original publication
Word count: 3261
Copyright Queen's quarterly Fall 1997
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