Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Amazon Music, YouTube, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
This week, on Making a Virtue of Incredulity:
It’s time to celebrate the heroes at the Bio-Cover Unit, and make fun of families who bizarrely graze each other’s faces with their fingers.
Joe decides if loving this movie is wrong, he doesn’t want to be right. Greg has divisive, controversial takes on John Travolta and Boat Chases, and an unfettered love of loud fabrics and BOOM SHOES.
This episode is dedicated in loving memory to Anderson, Montgomery, Berkely, Pinkus, Gianelli, and Winters.
Joe’s Back of the Box
When Castor Troy (Nicolas Cage) plants a bomb that threatens all of Los Angeles, Sean Archer (John Travolta) must go undercover to find its location as… CASTOR TROY. Using the latest technology, Sean Archer becomes Castor Troy. He must fight his own demons and himself as the real Castor Troy blackmails the doctors into making him Sean Archer. Under the masterful hand of action legend John Woo, this explosive and philosophical action movie runs the gamut from the sublime to the incredible to the unbelievable… Face off with your fears and see what dreams may come!
The REAL Back of the Box
This movie is bonkers. Like, legitimately ridiculously crazy. It makes no sense and it doesn’t need to. If you were there in 1997 and I said, “John Woo, John Travolta and Nicolas Cage” all you would have asked is “where and when.” This movie has it all, 1990’s action, unchecked casual sexual harassment, doves flying in slow motion, and actors and a director all working in completely different films. Does it hold up? Does it need to? Or is this peak cinema? All I can say is that I love this film dearly and am willing to suffer all the consequences of this choice.
Note: This transcript has been auto-generated, so… You know… It’s not our fault.
Greg: Joe in the movie we watched this week, two arch rivals assume each other’s identities and assume each other’s lives. My question to you is a do you have an arch rival? And b if you traded faces with them, what would you do to ruin their life?
Joe: Glad you asked. I have a lot of arch rivals. I probably don’t know that there aren’t rivals with me. Sure, I’m driven by spite a lot, so basically, if I switched places with them, they wouldn’t know what happened when they got back to their life. And they’re like, why are there’s weird e-mails about jealous guy Tucker all over the place, though.
Greg: Secret rivalries?
Joe: Yeah, secret rivalries mainly. But yeah, I would definitely try to ruin their reputation and bolster my own. I would love to say I would be a good person and not do it, but I would for sure want to do everything I could to make their lives miserable because I am mad at them. What about you? What do you, what would you do to your arch rival?
Greg: I think I just learned that you and I have been rivals this whole time.
Joe: What a surprise.
Greg: I would do something that, my mom despised when I was growing up. And that was if I was drinking hot tea, which I suppose this is kind of like a little bit later in childhood. I remember this one snow day.
Joe: I couldn’t go to school.
Greg: And so we were sitting in our living room and I started drinking some tea. And I don’t love really hot drinks. And so I can’t take a break drinking tea or coffee. So it was probably coffee that I was drinking, and I drank it like this.
Greg: And my mom looked at me horrified, and I took another sip. She just said, you are never going to get someone to marry you if you drink coffee like that.
Greg: If I have an arch rival, that’s what I’m doing. I’m winning relationships with long sips of hot drinks and awesome.
Joe: You used to do that? Well, we lived together, so that was, It was awesome. Probably why I took it so long.
Greg: We lived together right after that. Yeah, that’s where that came from. I’m. I’m saying that is maybe your restraint.
Joe: My favorite part was you would stretch it out even longer than that.
Greg: Like, it was.
Joe: Exaggerated for perfect comedic effect. And I thought it was hilarious the entire time.
Joe: I remember trying to do it years later, and I started laughing. And then I got it down my throat.
Greg: Amazing. We should do it when you’re switching faces with your rival as well. Exactly. Oh, my gosh, it’s the perfect plan. All right, let’s get to the show.
Joe: Let’s do it.
Clip: I’ve been chasing this guy ever since I joined the force. He. He has no conscience in here. He shows no. No remorse. He’s the mastermind behind numerous bombings and political assassinations here. It’s a felony list. A mile long murder, arson, kidnaping, terrorism, you name it. He’s the most dangerous and brilliant criminal mind I’ve ever known. I for years, I’ve been watching you, tracking him, studying his every every move.
Clip: I know his every every mannerism, every facial tic gesture. I know him better than he knows himself. And now, after all this time, I finally figured out a way to trap him.
Clip: I will become him.
Greg: In 1997, our guy John Lewis steps up to the plate to make a movie called Face Off. We are talking about John Travolta. Nicolas Cage is in this movie. Joan Allen, Gina Gershon, Nick Cassavetes, CCH pounder. I don’t know if there’s anybody else we really need to mention. Joe Skye Tucker. What makes face Off a great bad movie?
Joe: Oh my God, this movie is so crazy. I can’t even believe how crazy this movie is. I’ve watched it a number of times, and this last time might be my favorite time I’ve ever watched this movie. Just how bonkers this movie is from all of the Johnsons here. And like, probably the high watermark of his especially US career.
Joe: I know he kind of goes back to Hong Kong and does a lot more over there, but this is probably like his biggest US movie.
Greg: It didn’t make as much as Mission Impossible two. Yeah, but I do think this is the best American movie he made.
Joe: So you have him directing one kind of movie. What? He loves melodramatic action movies. Sure. Then you have actors who I don’t think fully understood what the assignment was, which is awesome. So you have Nicolas Cage kind of being crazy. Nicolas Cage. Yeah, which is hilarious and amazing. You have John Travolta trying to kind of keep up with that.
Joe: You have the craziest, most convoluted script ever. Maybe. I feel like there are a lot of shortcuts that they could have taken with just a little bit of exposition or yeah, they could have set this in the future, or they could have done so many things to make it make more sense. Then you have John Woo 1990s action which just lots of diving out of things and shooting at the same time.
Joe: Sparks flying when I don’t know why there are sparks flying in the background like just so much stuff like that. So this is a movie that literally is they take someone’s face off and put it on another person.
Greg: Hold on. So it’s not just a title.
Joe: It’s not just a title. It’s literally what happened in this movie. So all you need to know is that John Travolta and Nicolas Cage.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: Where are each other’s faces for the movie? Sure. One is good and one is bad, and we go from there. But I turn around to you, Greg, before I can just talk and talk about this movie. Why is Face Off a great bad movie?
Greg: Oh my gosh, this movie on paper should be the worst movie I have ever seen in my life. Yeah, a great. And then as you’re watching it at the very beginning, it is just ten out of ten. Bonkers.
Greg: On every level.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: But there’s something about it. This kind of like hold up there. Why am I totally enjoying this.
Joe: I love this movie. Yes, that’s the answer.
Greg: There’s some kind of humanity to what John Woo is bringing to the table, to what John Travolta and Nicolas Cage have cooked up. That is just it’s so outlandish. But then it also is kind of like, well, I don’t know, John Ellen’s around.
Joe: She’s pretty good. I’m happy she’s getting.
Greg: Paid twice as much as everybody else.
Joe: Involved them. It’s like they need a real actor. So like, let’s call John Allen because I need someone to deliver in this movie.
Greg: And John Woo had to fight for her. The studio didn’t want John Allen and he fought for her. And I’m so glad she’s in this. But I also question her decisions.
Joe: Yes. All of them.
Greg: I think she was an Oscar winner.
Joe: At this point, and she doesn’t want to be.
Greg: In a big shoot em up.
Greg: Oh my gosh. But this movie totally needed her. This is a great bad movie because it’s almost outside of description how ridiculous it is. Yet it is everything that movies should be.
Joe: I agree. It’s also should be stated that. So I remember when this came out. Sure. You say 1997. Yeah. John Woo, John Travolta, Nicolas Cage. Yeah, yeah. These are at the top of their, like, star power. Sure. I’m trying to put it in context today. It would be like bullet train, like Brad Pitt. Like that’s the star power of the time.
Joe: This was the biggest actors and one of the biggest action directors ever. Yeah.
Greg: I mean, on a much more minor level, this is kind of like Dune two. You know, you get one of our best directors, Denis Villeneuve, you get Zendaya in there, you get salami, you get Rebecca Ferguson, you’ve got Javier Bardem, you’ve got Josh Brolin, Austin Butler, Florence Pugh. I mean, it’s this movie is basically the Dune two of it’s time.
Greg: Christopher Walken’s in that movie. Stellan Skarsgard I mean, it’s ridiculous in that movie when you’re watching it. It’s also just bonkers. Like, what on earth is happening in this movie? But because it’s, you know, from a book and it’s Dune and there’s like real themes there that, that go so deep. It’s like Dune two, but less so. I guess that’s what I’m trying to say.
Joe: Okay.
Greg: I already regret bringing up Dune two, but it’s like when Dune two came up, if I was to sit down with Dune two with my mom, my mom, first of all, we’d have some real problems with how I drink coffee.
Joe: Until it gets too hot. And like, I can’t believe you’re still married.
Greg: Hard to know if it’s the movie with my coffee drinking that she doesn’t like in this moment. She just kind of like, what are we doing here? One of them. The worms. What’s happening with the worms? So this movie should not work yet this movie does work. And we’ll get to what critics said about this movie. But a main theme of what critics said about this movie is.
Greg: I’m not sure how to talk about this.
Greg: So this is going to be us. Not sure how to talk about this, but slow clapping at the entire time?
Joe: Yeah, exactly.
Greg: When this movie came out, do you remember your take on John Woo? Do you remember what expectations you had going in?
Joe: I had the highest expectations possible.
Greg: Okay. Because you would see in a few of his Hong Kong movies.
Joe: Yeah. I had seen at least three of his movies. Yeah. The killer being my favorite and, hard boiled. And another one before the killer. And so I was, like, all in on John Woo.
Greg: You had obviously seen Hard Target with Van Damme. We saw Broken Arrow in the theater with,
Joe: Christian Slater, John Travolta as well.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: So I’ve seen all of those movies. So was a big fan. And then it was just like, okay, Nicolas Cage, big fan. Yeah. He’s amazing.
Greg: He was missing in all the previous movies.
Joe: Yeah. John Travolta, this was on his post Pulp Fiction run, where he was probably one of the biggest movie stars in the world at this point again. So it’s just I was ready for it and it delivered to me. Yeah, I’ve seen it five, six times. Each time it’s kind of like watching it again for the first time.
Joe: Totally surprising. Like, wait, what? And it’s also surprisingly long. It really could be trimmed down. Like, it gets a little long in spots, but.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: Like, I hit a point about an hour from the end, and I remember looking and go, oh, I’ve got an hour. Okay. All right, I can buckle down. I got to get through it. Yeah. But then you kind of get into the last act of this and then it goes so good. There are just so many just ridiculous moments, especially in the opening action scene.
Joe: They’re just jumping out of doors and windows and shooting, and you’re not really sure they’re shooting out. And then you see the person, like flying backwards after they’ve been shot. There’s one scene where they clearly you can still see the wire attached to the stuntmen as they’re being pulled back. I there’s a scene where they’re on a runway and the plane is trying to take off, and a helicopter is keeping it from taking off, which I appreciated.
Joe: Yeah. And then they’re probably a half a mile apart on this runway. The people driving in the car can see into the windshield of the plane, and they’re like, they’ve got so-and-so. Yeah. The FBI agent who was held hostage. Totally. Totally. So stuff like that is just awesome. You have Nicolas Cage doing his almost, like, an impersonation of a Nicolas Cage movie.
Joe: Yeah, it’s the best way that I can describe his acting in this.
Greg: Really good way to put it. He had just made the rock and con air.
Greg: And then he was in Face Off. He did those three movies in a row after he won the Oscar for leaving Las Vegas.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: That’s where we’re at.
Joe: Yeah. Top of his.
Greg: Game. Yeah.
Joe: There’s some great scenes of him crying and celebrating at the same time. It’s kind of like a homage to Harvey Keitel crying in every independent film. Harvey Keitel was in.
Joe: It’s just so awesome. And the fact that they just lean into the face off part of it. Yeah. You feel like there could have been so many easier ways to get around some of the convoluted ness of them, like literally having to take their face off. Sure. I mean, he’s got a direct in, like, a year. Mission impossible two, where the whole thing is like to rip your face off and, like, have a mask.
Joe: Sure. So it could have done that.
Greg: Didn’t we say that Mission Impossible two was the unofficial sequel to Face Off as well?
Joe: I think so, yeah. Yeah, it sounds like us. Yeah. Tracks.
Greg: Yeah. This movie needed Nicolas Cage with all of the talented people around, and we will certainly get to a lot of the people who have worked on this movie that that make it the magic that it is. But Nicolas Cage and John Woo were the kind of the top two on that list for me. Nicolas Cage is bringing something that only Nicolas Cage can bring, and he’s bringing it after the Rock and Con Air.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: So I mean, like, has we talked about bands that have three records in a row?
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: This is an incredible run of three movies for him.
Joe: Yes.
Greg: We have mixed feelings about the Rock these days. We have? No, I haven’t watched Connor lately. If you watch Connor.
Joe: Lately, haven’t I? I’m worried. I remember seeing it in the theater and I loved it. Now I’m like, what did you.
Greg: Be worrying about this movie as well?
Joe: I be worried less about it because I’ve seen it more. Okay, okay. And that’s John Woo. And so there’s sometimes less problematic things in his movies aside from the glorified violence obviously for sure. But yeah, I just I haven’t seen Connor in forever, so I need to rewatch it.
Greg: So I just have to reiterate, this movie is ten out of ten the whole time.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: So they start, of course, with like fairy tale music. There’s like Vaseline all over the lens. So everything looks dreamlike.
Greg: And it’s, it’s John Travolta with his son. This is like five years ago. And Nicolas Cage has a mustache. That’s how we know it’s five years ago. That’s a bad guy mustache.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: He’s drinking sinisterly through a straw.
Joe: Which.
Greg: Is just made me laugh out loud. He has like, a sniper gun, and he’s there to kill John Travolta. And he shoots through. John Travolta doesn’t kill John Travolta, but does Kelly’s son.
Joe: You know.
Greg: That’s the opening of this movie.
Joe: Slow motion of the balloons that John Travolta son was holding as they float away. Yeah, metaphorically being the soul of the child. Yeah. Okay. Also, in that opening scene, we have the first time, John Travolta weirdly touches someone’s face and like, a sort of affectionate manner, but also just made me uncomfortable every single time in the movie.
Greg: And the most disturbing ones are when he kind of, like, catches the bottom.
Joe: Lip.
Greg: Of the person. That’s ten out of ten. Yeah, whatever.
Joe: Like they’re going to air if you do that to anybody. Absolutely.
Greg: Absolutely. In the director’s commentary, which also had the two screenwriters there, John Woo refers. This was his idea, and he calls it a love touch. We wanted to create some sort of love touch that could pass from one actor to the other when they when they swap roles. Yeah. And it is so creepy.
Joe: Yeah. I knew exactly why they had to put that in there and why. What the intention behind it. Yeah. And it didn’t make me any less uncomfortable. Every single time I.
Greg: And Nicolas Cage is the sniper, he’s like, on a hill far away. And when he pulls off the fabric, covering up the sniper rifle, which I’m pretty sure you don’t really have to do, he does it with a lot of flair to signal to everyone around him. And also, I don’t know if you noticed this, but this fabric happens to be not just regular fabric, but it’s loud fabric.
Joe: Oh no I noticed.
Greg: Here’s the volume of the fabric when he pulls it off of the guy right here. And.
Greg: He’s.
Greg: Just the loudest fabric in history by the way. That’s when Face Off comes on the screen. So that doubles as our noise for when the towel comes up which makes it even better. Yeah. Even then, 11 out of ten.
Joe: There are multiple other moments where there is loud fabric he puts on his coat. He gets out of his car at one point. The wind is blowing. Yeah. He takes off his coat and then puts on another coat. And that coat makes makes a noise. I am so.
Greg: Glad you brought this up.
Joe: So good.
Greg: Here is why I’m glad you brought this up. First of all, a loud fabric made me laugh every time. Yeah, there are so many loud inanimate objects in this movie. It is a movie made for me specifically.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: As someone who loves loud lights, I love loud. Everything loud. Bad guy shoes.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: But in the commentary, the writer said, that’s amazing that you did that with Nicolas Cage’s coat or whatever. Where did that idea come from? And he said, Lawrence of Arabia.
Joe: Awesome.
Greg: So many aspects of this movie came from the greatest directors and the greatest films in history. John Woo is just totally rooted in royalty, and he is coming from such an earnest, amazing place. But the way that that comes out of him is Nicolas Cage has loud fabric.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: He seems like just the most amazing human being. Now I will be seeing his praises. It was one of the greatest commentaries where the writers of this movie are madmen, and they made the craziest script in history. Yeah. Then when John Woo makes it, it somehow is rooted in, like, relationships and emotions and feelings. It just. I don’t know how he does it.
Greg: I don’t know how he does it.
Joe: Everyone is committed the way he is. It’s something special. You see it in Like The Killer, which is another bonkers movie. Yeah. But when everyone is committed to that melodramatic feel, that earnestness, it works. And this is where. And sometimes it’s a struggle for, like, Nicolas Cage and John Travolta, I feel like are not quite sure what the tone of the movie is of like, there’s a script and then there’s the John Woo isms of it, and that just makes it perfect and all the ways that I love.
Joe: Yeah. But also probably isn’t exactly the movie that John Woo wanted to make. And I haven’t seen the commentary, so I don’t know how he feels about the finished product of it, but there are moments where it feels like there’s a mismatch of what he is going for in his movies and what the actors are doing in it.
Greg: And do you feel like that happened in this movie.
Joe: In this movie, and like in some of his American ones? Because I feel like it might almost be like a cultural thing of like the Hong Kong movies, but then it’s like a soap opera. They have to take it completely serious. They have to be totally deadpan about it, and if they’re not, it doesn’t work. So it’s kind of like that wink to the camera like this being crazy.
Joe: I feel like even in, Mission Impossible two, there were some moments of like the, the kind of movie that John Woo was making and then the kind of movie it ended up being are a little different. You know, all those moments where there’s unnecessary slow motion in a shot. But yeah, I love sure. And sometimes the actors don’t fully realize why that’s happening.
Joe: Or, you know, maybe Tom cruise in Mission Impossible two or Tandy Newton. They’re just it’s not as tight. So those moments are the ones where you can lose it and then it becomes kind of silly. Everybody has to take this world and their role in it excruciatingly seriously. Yeah, that’s the piece. That’s the magic to me of John Woo’s movies.
Joe: Yeah. Is everybody is just has to be just as committed as he is to the world that they’re in their moment. That loses it for me. And I love that because that makes it a great bad movie. But it does sometimes take me out of the movie, especially.
Greg: At the beginning. Yeah. What on earth is Nicolas Cage doing at the beginning of this movie?
Joe: It’s just like, oh, okay, be over the top. Okay, I’ll be over the top. And I was like, okay, I didn’t I don’t believe you. Yeah.
Greg: And I think I completely agree with you where the thing that makes their role switch that happens when they switch faces and somehow they also have made their bodies totally changed as.
Joe: Well, which doesn’t make any sense now.
Greg: Like we learn at the end when they when the good guy gets his wedding ring back from the bad guy who’s wearing it, then they have very different finger sizes.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: So are we to believe that Doctor Malcolm Walsh of the. What was it, the bio cover unit?
Joe: Yeah, of the government.
Greg: Are we to believe that he actually changed finger sizes as well?
Joe: I think so, I think that’s what we’re supposed to. That’s what we’re led to believe. Everything. And just like with new technology and anti-inflammatories, you’ll be on your feet in a couple of days. Oh my.
Greg: Gosh. Seriously. So let’s stop wasting our time. So when they switch characters now, John Travolta is completely out of his mind. Bonkers.
Greg: And Nicolas Cage is supposed to be sort of more internal, sort of having an emotional journey, less of a egotistical narcissist.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: But before this face swap, John Travolta is also being bonkers. Crazy, right?
Joe: Yeah. Yeah.
Greg: So I think John Travolta doesn’t quite understand what we’re doing here. And I think Nicolas Cage does. That’s that’s my read on this movie.
Joe: Yeah. Nicolas Cage was trying to give you a range of, like, I’m crazy, so when I’m having to act crazy. But you can see me struggling with how crazy I’m having to act because I’m actually a good guy. Right. It reads better. I think I struggled more with John Travolta in this movie than Nicolas Cage. Sure. And you know, this brings out my Nicolas Cage theory of that he’s just the same in every movie he’s in, no matter what movie he is.
Joe: Yeah. And sometimes the movies are great and it works, and sometimes it’s not. And this is one that works for me.
Greg: This is one of those. That works. Yeah. Yeah. I completely agree with you. This is what I wanted from Nicolas Cage in this movie. And this is what we got.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: I also think that John Travolta does a better job of emulating Nicolas Cage isms than Nicolas Cage does, emulating John Travolta isms.
Joe: I would agree with that as well.
Greg: But that’s on the outside.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: What’s happening on the inside is Nicolas Cage is a just a bombastic, egotistical nut bag at the beginning. Yeah. And then he does have some sort of internal journey throughout the movie. That is the thing that gets me through the movie, I think. Yeah. So I don’t, I don’t know, I think Nicolas Cage wins the movie.
Joe: I think he does.
Greg: But also, can we have the conversation that needed to happen about John Travolta?
Joe: Absolutely.
Greg: Kind of have a bone to pick about John Travolta. I have a very bad attitude about John Travolta. His fame. Okay. I think he is one of our most overrated actors in all of Hollywood history, which is saying a lot in recent history. I was limited to recent history. Yeah, I think he has been in some great movies and he has been great in some movies.
Greg: I don’t get it. I don’t get why John Travolta is a big deal. Can this be an episode of Joe explains why John Travolta is a big deal to grease Leinart?
Joe: Well, as someone who loved the Look Who’s Talking movies when they came out.
Greg: Obviously that.
Joe: Was probably my first introduction to John Travolta. Yeah, me was I watched reruns of Welcome Back, Kotter, and then I kind of knew about Saturday Night Fever and some of those movies, but I think I’ve ever watched any of his 70s stuff except for Welcome Back, Kotter.
Greg: Yeah, I only knew the impression of Welcome Back, Kotter from SNL.
Joe: Yeah, so I don’t know if I’m going to be able to, like, eliminated. I think he gets to skate by on Pulp Fiction because it put him back on the map, and then after that he’s like in Broken Arrow and all those, and he’s making $20 million a movie. But I think it was Quentin Tarantino picking the perfect role for him.
Joe: The cast in that movie is just insane.
Greg: Yeah it is.
Joe: I feel like Pulp Fiction is probably a little overrated now, but it’s a great cast. It’s a great movie. I don’t know if it’s like one of the greatest movies ever made. It’s in the top half of Quentin Tarantino’s movies. But I still, I think that there are better ones that he’s done. So it’s like John Travolta was then propelled back to fame.
Joe: Yeah. And everyone loves a comeback story. I would say he’s definitely an overrated actor to me. And in terms of what he can do, I don’t think he ruins movies. I do.
Greg: I think he ruined Broken Arrow.
Joe: Shots fired at John. I haven’t I haven’t seen Broken Arrow in long enough that I don’t remember. Yeah. Yeah, I don’t know. He’s he doesn’t have the charm that like to me, Keanu Reeves has.
Greg: The good comparison. Yeah.
Joe: Again, I will die on the hill of Keanu Reeves as I just. I’m a big I’m a really big fan of his. Yeah. Not a great actor. And it doesn’t really matter because there’s a likability to him that kind of shines through. And John Travolta might be the most likable person in the world, but it just doesn’t read on the screen the same way.
Greg: I think he is. That’s something that came up in the commentary quite a bit, was Nicolas Cage was very much to himself on the set, kind of preparing in a corner and not talking with anybody to kind of get the interiority. John Travolta was talking to everybody to make sure they were good, and if they weren’t good, he was cheering them up.
Greg: And something that he did on the set, and maybe this is just what he does in life, is he was doing impressions of everybody all the time. Like, he is like a really big mimic and makes everybody laugh while he’s doing that.
Joe: Are you talking yourself into John Travolta now? No. Like I’m no.
Greg: I think he’s so overrated. I’m sure he’s a very lovely person. And some of his movies have been good, but that his batting average is so much lower than Keanu Reeves. Yeah, Keanu Reeves might not be a better actor, but he’s in better movies. There’s something about Keanu Reeves that pulls together anyways. Okay, well, I think we did it.
Greg: I think we had the conversation. Maybe he also plays like a really wicked, vivacious bad guy in a lot of his movies. And I think this is maybe the only movie where I feel like it works. And it only works because he’s also emulating Nicolas Cage was doing it right.
Joe: I agree with you on his bad guys where they he’s like trying to be the classic charismatic bad guy and it just doesn’t read at all. That comes across as fake and actorly. And I’m trying to think of like the best bad guys we’ve had. You’d never you wouldn’t put him in any of those categories ever.
Greg: Have you watched the most recent Taking of Pelham 123? No. He is so horrible in it. Yeah, we promise we will get to it because Denzel Washington and Tony Scott teamed up for that movie.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: So we will accidentally watch another John Travolta movie.
Joe: Yeah. And we’ll probably watch swordfish, which is him as a bad guy. He’s that movie is terrible.
Greg: I don’t know if we’ll get to swordfish.
Joe: Oh, wow. Is that the line? We’ve had the.
Greg: I think we’ve hit the line. I feel very strongly that we only want to do movies that we can stand behind. They are great. They’re also bad. Yeah, but we can stand behind that. They are great. Face off is a great movie. Yeah, for so many reasons. I don’t know that swordfish is a great movie.
Joe: Is it? I can’t answer that right now.
Greg: So, you know, we have a line.
Joe: Okay, swordfish is the line right now. That’s a perfect line for us. Yeah.
Greg: Okay, so let’s get back to the beginning of this movie. Nicolas Cage drinks from a straw, and he’s an evil guy with a mustache.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Can you look tough and drink from a straw?
Joe: No, it is not possible.
Greg: So what is Nicolas Cage doing as the evil bad guy with a mustache? Drinking. What is he doing there? Is he winking to us? I know, I know, this is ridiculous.
Joe: I don’t know, I think he’s kind of in it. There are moments where I feel like he is going over the top of, like, how crazy Nicolas Cage can I get? And so I feel like, yeah, that’s what he was doing. There’s no backstory at all. On why he’s shooting John.
Greg: Travolta, right? Never explained.
Joe: And then it’s, you know, five years later and they’re tracking him down and, you know, he gets out of the car with the wind whipping. One of my favorite scenes.
Greg: Really had like Lawrence of Arabia vibes. Yeah.
Joe: That probably. Yeah. Totally. Totally takes off his jacket, puts on a loud jacket, gets on a plane. Yep. Shot of his gold guns.
Greg: With dragons on.
Joe: Them. Yeah.
Greg: Nicolas Cage’s idea, by the way.
Joe: Awesome. Yeah. And then he’s just like, so over the top with the flight attendant slash FBI agent. Right. And then the FBI are. They’re trying to stop the plane from taking off.
Greg: They flagged it because Nicolas Cage’s brother Pollocks try Nicolas Cage at this point is Castor try. And Pollux Troy paid with cash to get things moving faster. And he was flagged for, you know. Oh, my gosh, Pollux, I just paid with cash, right? Get a flight. Castor Troy must be close by.
Joe: Yeah, and they have planted a bomb in somewhere like the convention center in LA.
Greg: The L.A. Convention center.
Joe: That my favorite part of this is. It’s set for, like, ten years into the future. I don’t know how, but it’s, you know, usually in these movies, there’s, like, in 12 hours, this bomb is going to go off in eight hours. No, it’s like 240 some hours.
Joe: So just so you know what kind of movie you’re watching, they’re really planning ahead.
Greg: So he sets it in this tower, Nicolas Cage, and then he starts doing a ballet dance.
Greg: Immediately.
Joe: And he’s dressed as a priest and.
Greg: He’s singing Hallelujah.
Joe: Yeah. And then there’s a choir and he sexually harasses someone in the chorus. So spoiler alert for my drinking games. It’s the casual sexual harassment that was just accepted in the mid 90s.
Greg: He’s a cartoon character. He’s absolutely a cartoon character. Yeah, he is out of ten and we need him at 2.5. Yeah, but who else is like this in a movie?
Joe: Yeah, nobody.
Greg: It is also maybe something we haven’t seen before. I mean, he’s just like, I’m just going to, like, I’m just going to do a ten out of ten on this one.
Joe: Yeah, yeah. I mean, there’s a million cameras everywhere. He is probably one of the most wanted people on the planet. And there he is, like dancing and a pretty outfit through the convention center after planning a bomb. And nobody thinks to look there. So anyway, that’s the kind of movie we’re dealing with here.
Greg: A million cameras everywhere. Is that was that on our mind in 1997?
Joe: Yeah. Probably not. We had pushing in in hands, but not to the same degree that we have it now. So I’m sure.
Greg: I don’t think John Travolta is who he should be at the beginning of this movie. He is like yelling at everybody. He’s super upset. And then when they swap places, Nicolas Cage is like not super upset. He’s like super sad.
Greg: This is a weak link in the movie. Were they aware of what they were doing. I don’t quite follow it. What they’re doing. I know there’s lots to grab on to. But this aspect of it was ridiculous.
Joe: Yeah. Like I actually think that John Travolta’s character becomes better once he’s inhabited by. Yeah, totally. Yeah. Totally.
Greg: Like I don’t think Travolta understood. Yeah. But a little backstory. Travolta and Nicolas Cage, they met and hung out for, like, two.
Joe: Weeks.
Greg: To put a plan together of who they would be before and after the face swap. Maybe they’re amazing.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: This movie is super amazing. So I feel like I need to turn the knob towards. I enjoyed it a little bit more than I am right now.
Joe: Yeah, it’s one of those, like if you start examining every scene, yeah, it starts to lose it. But then if you step back and you just go, oh, this is a movie about them literally taking their face off, because that was the the only thing that they could think of to get the location of the bomb. It’s like, okay, this movie is brilliant.
Greg: He’s going to go to a jail that is made at the place where they filmed the live action Super Mario Brothers movie.
Joe: I think so.
Greg: Yeah, and that’s where those boots are from, I think.
Joe: Awesome. The plan is that he’ll just go in for a couple days, get the location of the bomb. Yeah, and then come out and get his face put back on and everything is fine. But of course, Castor Troy or Nicolas Cage wakes up, then also gets his henchmen to come and capture the doctor and bring him back, and then put Sean, Archer or John Travolta’s face on his.
Joe: Yeah. And then you have this great moment when Nicolas Cage has found the location, thinks he’s getting out and then John Travolta as Castor Troy shows up at the jail and he’s screwed and he’s got to break out of jail from there. That’s, I think, my favorite moment in this whole movie.
Greg: It’s kind of a big turning point. That’s when you realize you have a ball game. Yeah, it should be when they have the face swap. But when you realize they really are going to take over each other’s lives.
Greg: That’s the ball game. Yeah.
Joe: And then they have interesting parallels that they bring back as he breaks out of jail. And he kind of meets up with the old crew and makes things right with the mother of his child who is Gina Gershon.
Greg: And this we know that the person who is now in looking like Nicolas Cage doesn’t know anything about the guy’s life. Really? Yeah. But yeah, his character, not only as it is now, but also as Castor, Troy, Castor. Troy didn’t know that he had a kid.
Joe: Yeah. So you have all of that happening and then you have John Travolta as Castor Troy, the bad guy. Sure. Breathing some life into John Travolta or Sean Archer’s world.
Greg: Yep. His five year old son has been killed by the bad guy. Now he has a daughter that is in high school. And when we meet her, she has been suspended from school for eye makeup. Is that basically the explanation? She has eye makeup on. Yeah, that’s how we know that she’s going on on the wrong track.
Joe: Yeah. She’s one of them street toughs now. Or something like that. And I was like, there are moments in this movie where it’s clear that it was written by people who have no connection or are not talking to like, kids. Sure. It’s just like, well, let’s make them all made up. And, you know, let’s give her some really heavy eye makeup and that’ll show that she’s now in the punk rock scene.
Joe: Right.
Greg: You know, on the wrong track.
Joe: Yeah. She is listening to pop has got a brand new bag in her headphones. Like what kid in 1997 is listening? James Brown. Right. Totally. So those are the moments that I love in these movies. And then there was another one where there’s, like, a weird scene with Somewhere Over the Rainbow playing kind of slowed down when there’s an action scene and someone was listening to it at one point.
Joe: But it makes no sense. But it makes perfect sense in the middle of all the chaos, right? You know, stuff like that I love in this movie. But the more you try to explain this movie, the crazier it starts to sound.
Greg: Well, pretty quickly in this movie, Nicolas Cage and his brother Castor and Pollux Troy. Are trying to escape on a plane. The good guys, meaning this prefab swap. John Travolta is in a helicopter. Gloriously low flying helicopter. Yeah. Needlessly low flying helicopter. Yeah. John Wayne was always good for one of those. They are chasing this plane as it’s trying to take off.
Greg: And man, there was a moment where I kind of questioned if this was the same runway as Fast and Furious.
Joe: Six, and I guess that’s very long.
Greg: The longest runway runway in history.
Greg: And I question that and then like three minutes later I decided, no, this actually is the runway from as far as it has to be.
Joe: Yeah. The same still happening. Yeah.
Greg: It’s kind of like the Hobbs and Shaw travel theory of runways is Fast and Furious six. Yeah, but this action scene would be the closing action scene of a lesser movie.
Joe: Absolutely.
Greg: We keep bumping into this in great bad movies. You start with something big because.
Joe: Yeah, then they stop at the plane crashes and there’s a shootout, right? With lots of people again jumping out of doors and windows and shooting, and then sparks flying and like, office paper just flying up everywhere.
Greg: Barrels are flying up. Yeah. Explosions. That’s a big move in this movie.
Joe: Yeah. It’s so good.
Greg: They really did crash this plane into this thing. They had 13 cameras rolling.
Joe: Doesn’t surprise me. They don’t make movies like this anymore with the real stunts and real explosions.
Greg: Right. Lots of practical stuff going on.
Joe: Yeah, and I love that piece of it. I can really feel it.
Greg: You really can. Yeah.
Joe: So I love that.
Greg: According to producer Barry M Osborn, most of the challenging action scenes were supposed to be green screen shots, but they film them practically to support the, quote, realism of story.
Joe: Yeah, absolutely.
Greg: That’s why this movie is so realistic.
Joe: Yeah.
Joe: It’s so good.
Greg: If Tony Sky was filming that plane crashing into that hangar. They used 13 cameras. How many cameras do you think Tony Scott used?
Joe: At least twice that.
Greg: That’s not the answer we were going for. The answer we were going for was how many cameras exist? Yeah.
Joe: It would also be filmed unlike 14 other helicopters around it. Yeah.
Greg: But the scene is amazing. It is incredible. And oh, my gosh, you know, you’re in good hands after this scene.
Joe: Yeah. It’s got also one of my favorite kind of tropes that we have where they’re counting the bullets. And so they like both. Right, are pointing a gun at each other and like, each have one shot left or something like that.
Greg: Love it.
Joe: So good.
Greg: I also like this John Travolta is like saving everybody from themselves. They don’t know that when somebody is standing there pointing a gun at them, that they’re going to get shot and he has to, like, run behind them and get them down so they don’t get shot.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: These are all professionals.
Greg: Do they not know that when somebody is standing there with a gun they might get shot.
Joe: No. And they’re all standing like not behind anything. Just totally out in the open.
Greg: And many of them do get shot. Judge Roberts is pretty pissed about it when he goes back to the office.
Joe: Yeah. They made a really big deal about the person who gets shot in the ear.
Greg: Yeah, they do.
Joe: The one main squib, and that’s how they introduce the technology of the doctor. Walsh. That is going to do the face swap.
Greg: And he works for the bio cover unit. Yeah, I read about that.
Joe: Yeah. Yeah.
Greg: So they catch Castor Troy.
Greg: He’s in a coma now.
Joe: Everyone thinks he’s dead.
Greg: And so everybody’s celebrating at the office and somebody sends like a bottle of champagne to the office. And John Travolta doesn’t like that they’ve sent champagne. Because people died. So here’s what he does in the office when they say this champagne just came.
Clip: Send it back. Now wait.
Clip: How about, what about to Anderson Montgomery. Berkley. Pincus. Gianelli. Winters.
Greg: Okay, here’s my theory there.
Joe: Okay.
Greg: We all know that. You know, he’s had a rough couple of years because his son died. You know, he’s tight with Anderson. Obviously, Montgomery got hurt. Berkley. Long pause. And then I.
Joe: Think.
Greg: What he does is he starts making up coworkers.
Joe: Last name? I think so.
Greg: Because if you’re making up names, is there a better made up name than Pincus?
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: I don’t think there’s a Pincus. I think they should have cut to everybody, including Margaret Cho, the comedian Margaret Cho, who works in the office. And just like what? There was no Pac. Yes. Yeah. And then he says Galli and Winters.
Greg: He’s clearly just making up names right there.
Joe: Yeah. Absolutely. And then may.
Greg: Face swap blah blah blah. Yeah. That’s the rest of the movie.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Pretty much John Travolta is like going around the office like a madman. And Nicolas Cage is going around like a madman.
Greg: And so it makes it harder to distinguish who is crazier when they switch spots. Yeah. And this is a problem with this movie for me.
Joe: Or maybe that to the point is that they’re more cut from the same cloth than we think.
Greg: See, John, when he talks about how his favorite good guys have a little bit of bad in them, and his favorite bad guys have a little bit of good. Yeah. And he really likes that distinction. So this, you know, swapping the good guy and the bad guy. He liked that that happening in this movie. But then we get to this outlandish idea that maybe John Travolta should put Nicolas Cage’s face on him so that he can go talk to his brother who’s in jail.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Nicolas Cage’s brother Pollux. Right. By the way, if you have two more kids. Would you name them Pollux and Castor?
Joe: Absolutely, sir. Yeah. Gillian looked it up. They’re actually Greek and Roman gods that are were brothers. Yeah. Pollux and Castor. Yeah, absolutely. I like them. They’re cool names.
Greg: So third place is a very distant third, I think, for this guy. Tucker family. I think Pollux and Castor.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: And both of them have the middle name Troy? Yeah, obviously.
Joe: Obviously. Yeah.
Greg: But when they start talking about how they need to do this, the science fiction aspect of this movie was dramatically dropped that it’s happening like in current day.
Greg: But there’s this thing we can do in the bio cover unit and the way that they try to explain this.
Joe: Is so good.
Greg: And let’s listen to that scene.
Clip: I could put an agent in a cell. Maybe Pollux will let it slip. Oh come on. He’s paranoid. Sociopath. The only person he talked to about that bomb is brother, and he’s dead. There is one other possibility.
Greg: And then they just let that sit there for the longest.
Joe: I love the music.
Greg: I love the music. Like we’re just in this amazing fantasy now.
Greg: One other possibility made me laugh really hard when I was.
Joe: At this time.
Greg: There is the main plot point and title of this movie that we could consider.
Joe: Yeah, we are in a movie called Face Off. So.
Greg: So let’s think outside the box for a second. Pink is hated this, but he’s not around anymore. And Ellie, you know what?
Joe: No.
Greg: When we get into the bad guys world. We meet Gina Gershon.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Nick Cassavetes.
Greg: Who showed up to this movie? He decided to shave his head. Yeah. Bald guy with a big earring is there is a real bad guy trope. Yeah. I learned while watching this.
Joe: Movie.
Greg: But John Wayne was pretty stoked that he had shaved his head. Like, I love this idea. This is exactly who I thought the character should be. Gina Gershon super successful.
Greg: And like, super funny, super dramatic because she can really good actor Nick Cassavetes. He had a movie that came out two months after this movie came out called She’s So Lovely I think is what it was called. He directed it. He wrote it. Actually, I don’t know if he wrote it. I think his dad, the super famous actor, writer, director John Cassavetes, had written that.
Greg: Right.
Joe: That’s right.
Greg: And she’s so lovely. Had Sean Penn, Robin Wright, Penn and John Travolta crazy. And he went on to make a ton of movies that were well regarded, or at least did really well, like he directed The Notebook.
Joe: With.
Greg: Gosling and Rachel McAdams. He made Alpha Dog.
Joe: With.
Greg: Bruce Willis and Justin Timberlake.
Greg: That’s a movie where people go, oh, it’s better than you think it’s going to be. There’s super talented, high functioning people in Face Off making what should be the worst movie. And I think that might be the secret to this movie’s success is very smart, very talented people.
Joe: Got it. Yeah. Yeah. So we have the science fiction aspect, which I did appreciate that they didn’t go into too much detail.
Greg: They cut that out.
Joe: Yeah. One of my favorite parts about when they do the face swap and they’re talking about it is this beautiful exposition that you don’t need to have the same blood type. And I feel like they like, if they could have flashed on the screen. You don’t need the same blood type. Remember this. This might come back in the future.
Joe: Yeah, totally. Which flies in the face of everything that we know about.
Greg: How bodies work.
Joe: Yeah, how bodies work.
Greg: It’s a lot like. And there might be an f 14 around and Top Gun Maverick.
Joe: Exactly. But Tomcat, if you will remember that from 1987.
Greg: Much like what you learned right there, I learned that if there’s ever going to be a partner to a cop in a movie, their name should be Tito. Can we agree on that?
Joe: Yes, we can agree on that one.
Greg: Tito is bare minimum amount of Tito’s I want to see. Yeah. As a partner in a movie. Before John Travolta swaps the faces, he gives his ring to Tito. I’m like, hey, you’re going to need this. We hold on to this for me. Have you ever lost your wedding ring?
Joe: No I haven’t.
Greg: Have you ever not worn it for a while?
Joe: No. It’s always just there.
Greg: Yeah, I totally I was in traffic one time because I worked on the east side of Seattle, and I was going back to my house in Seattle, so I was in traffic on 520 bridge, and I don’t know what I was thinking about, but I was just kind of like playing with my ring on my finger. And I dropped it in my car in a when a road to someplace that I could not find.
Joe: Oh, oh.
Greg: So for a couple days, my wedding ring was just like, stuck under the driver’s seat. And some crevice. And, I felt so weird.
Greg: It’s a thing I don’t even notice. Is there most every day. And then for like, a couple days, like it felt extra breezy right there.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: And I felt so weird. And the call was just like it’s no big deal. It’s totally fine. You know, let’s get another ring.
Joe: It’s fine.
Greg: I don’t know if Tito is picking up on that kind of energy, but I bet.
Joe: Probably classic Tito.
Greg: Yeah, totally. Tito gets it. You kidding me? Every good partner is going to get it.
Greg: But you have to think of that moment. John Travolta felt a little weird taking.
Joe: His ring off.
Greg: Ultimately, I took the seat out of my car and found it. And so we did not have to get another one. It’s alarmingly easy to take a seat and have car. That’s what I learned that day.
Joe: Okay. All right. It’s pretty bizarre. It’s a.
Greg: Very quick socket wrench scenario.
Joe: To get get to know you.
Greg: That if you ever need to steal one.
Joe: So we have a face swap. Now we’re going to prison.
Greg: None of the punches in this prison scene looked real to me.
Joe: Yeah, I had a moment in this movie, and I have to say that John Woo walked. So David Leach and chatter the Hell’s Gate can run. Sure. Sure. John Woo is the beginning of Gun Fu. In a lot of ways. I missed better stunts. It was a lot of like, we’re shooting this way, and then we’ll just have people over here that get shot by it, and then we’re shooting back, and it just felt very disjointed at different points.
Joe: I missed that John Wick. David Leach where at? A little bit more happened within the frame. Yeah, the explosions are great. Some of the chases are really fun. But yeah.
Greg: Here’s what I would say. I would say the bullet points of ideas for what the action scenes should be in this movie are some of the best we’ve ever had.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Some of the particulars of how to do that fight scene definitely needed 8711 that David Leitch, Chad Stahelski, and this is something I didn’t talk about in the John Wick episode, but David Leach talks about when you’re training people to do stunts, if they know judo or whatever, that’s helpful to a certain extent, but that’s not actually what you do in movies.
Joe: He said.
Greg: It’s nice if they know that stuff, but then you have to teach them how to essentially.
Joe: Dance.
Greg: Right. And so he said really what we teach people is essentially ballet. And they have to memorize those dance moves so that they don’t get hurt. But it has to look like something. And I feel like that’s what’s missing. That’s the fine touch that they put on things in their movies where people really do look like they’re getting, you know, punched over and over again in that jail scene.
Greg: Jon, we wanted some reality. And so those are actually like ex-convicts that are in jail.
Joe: Interesting.
Greg: They were all like non-actors so that they would look right. But when it came to the action scene of them punching, I was like, wow, this is really slow. And they are obviously not actually punching anybody.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: And he gave the direction. Don’t ever try to pretend to punch somebody in the face, because we think that the audience will freak out, that it will hurt, you know, Nicolas Cage too much if he gets punched in the face because it’s such a key point. So it’s all like body blows. And so it’s like already half as exciting.
Greg: And they’re not stunt performers.
Joe: It’s very rough. Yeah. They couldn’t get out of that jail fast enough for me.
Greg: And what do they do. They like somehow do something with the electricity. And sparks are flying everywhere.
Joe: Sparks are flying everywhere. And every action scene. Not just this one but yeah, sparks are flying. And then they get out and he gets the boots that have the magnets and magnetized and then, yeah, he’s on an oil rig somewhere.
Greg: And so this is one of a couple scenes that could not be done fast enough. Yeah. So he gets out of the jail, he breaks out, he goes to the roof of the jail, and we find out that it’s in the middle of the ocean. We get this high up shot to show that Nicolas Cage is on top of this thing, and there is nothing for miles anywhere to be seen.
Greg: And then we cut to right where we just had a view of. And a helicopter shows up from right there.
Joe: Yes. That’s right.
Greg: And we have the most amazing helicopter out of nowhere that literally made me clap in my house, because it’s not just a helicopter out of nowhere. It’s not that he couldn’t hear it, and it was right below the deck of what he was standing on. We were actually just looking at that place and it was not there. So it’s also his eyes that it was an invisible helicopter out of nowhere.
Joe: It’s the best kind of helicopter out of nowhere.
Greg: It’s literally out of nowhere. This helicopter did not exist a second ago in space and time, and now it does. And so now we have basically the die hard when he’s on the roof and the helicopters are flying by and trying to shoot him. Yeah. And he’s like jumping down off levels and, you know, barrels are shooting up in the air.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: From being shot at by this helicopter. Oh my gosh. The helicopter disappears for like a second. We suddenly can’t hear it again and it shows up again. It’s a double helicopter out of nowhere Joe.
Joe: I, I missed that part of it, but that is so awesome.
Greg: He at this moment, would he not be keenly aware of where the helicopter is? He somehow loses track of it and it happens again. And it is the greatest thing that’s ever happened in film history.
Greg: They blow up some thing near him and it like, sprays his shoes with flammable stuff. And now his shoes are on fire. So in the middle of this die Hard scene, he has to take his shoes off. And now he’s barefoot. And then the way he escapes is he jumps off the top of this building into the ocean.
Greg: Helicopter is still there with a great vantage point to see where he is. If you’re swimming.
Joe: Right.
Greg: Cut to. He’s made it to town. Yeah. He somehow swims under the ocean. A helicopter that is right there cannot see him. We’re good to go. He made it back to town. Yeah. No need for.
Joe: Explanation. As long as he jumps into the water, he’s fine. And he can swim for miles. It’s. It’s all good.
Greg: Yeah, and he’s barefoot now. Yeah. And they cut to him outside a valet parking lot. Barefoot? Yeah. And he steals some keys, does the whole weapon, and then he gets a car to steal.
Joe: Yeah, and he’s back with Gina Gershon, and they’re Cassavetes, right? Yeah. And off we go. One of my favorite parts about this movie is also how quickly people accept the fact that the face swap has happened, and then they’re like, oh, yeah, you’re Castor Troy. Even though you look like Sean Archer. And they just go with it and vice versa.
Greg: So who accepts it first?
Joe: I think Pollux Troy accepts that Sean Archer.
Greg: Yeah. He knows somehow.
Joe: Yeah. Just like and so. And he is very questioning of Nicholas Cage when he gets into the jail that it’s really him. Yeah, maybe like, oh, you’re supposed to be dead. So he’s very suspicious of that. Yeah. Similarly, when Nicolas Cage comes to his wife and explains and that’s where she does the.
Greg: The blood test.
Joe: Yeah. Yes. Even though she is, you know, her husband is there and they’re kind of rekindling their romance. And it because Castor Troy is in her life, the passion has been reignited in their marriage a little bit. Right. But then all of a sudden, here’s the arch nemesis who killed their son, and she just kind of goes with, oh, I will I will believe that this is possible.
Joe: So just Joan Allen in lesser hands would probably not have failed. This is like next when you have, Julianne Moore delivering crazy line after crazy line. This is Joan Allen, probably the best actor in this entire movie.
Greg: She actually pulls a move that Nicolas Cage pulls a few times where she is just shaking like he is shaking when he realizes he’s stuck in in jail and he’s, like, shaking his hands and he’s touching his face a lot. There’s so many times.
Joe: Yeah, that.
Greg: They touch their face in this.
Joe: Movie. Yeah, but.
Greg: She’s just sitting there shaking. And apparently we’re supposed to believe that she doesn’t actually know that he’s telling the truth until the blood test. So the whole scene where Nicolas Cage has the impossible job.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Of explaining out loud what the plot to this movie is.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Something you would wish on nobody. But he is having the time of his life explaining this. He’s like laughing at first and he’s screaming and then he’s crying all in the same sentence.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Should we listen to Nicolas Cage describe this movie? Okay.
Joe: Absolutely.
Clip: I’m tired of. The assignment was to enter a federal prison as cast. Trust. Fucking insane. And it’s a special upsurge. Surgeon, gave me, cast his face.
Clip: Then, and then somehow Castor came out of his, His coma.
Joe: First laughing and.
Clip: Killed everybody who knew about the mission. But. But not before transforming into me.
Joe: That means crying.
Joe: Unbelievable.
Greg: Unbelievable. She’s, like, sitting there shaking.
Greg: Here’s what’s crazy about that scene. First of all, it is so excruciating to hear somebody talk out loud about what it is that I’m watching. And I just have it a real I have to look at myself in the mirror at that moment, you know, in a way that I’m uncomfortable with.
Greg: This is exactly like the story I told when my wife came home five minutes before taking was over, and I’d press pause and then I explained to her what taken was about, she’s going to watch the end with me. And by the time I got through the whole plot point, she just started laughing. She’s like, I’m not going to watch this with you.
Greg: I did not realize how ridiculous take it was until I had to say it out loud. It’s exactly that same moment. I’m just like, pulling my hair out.
Joe: Like, stop.
Greg: Making me feel this way.
Joe: Yes, exactly.
Greg: And they avoid that the rest of the movie. But here’s what’s crazy about that scene. That scene was Nicolas Cage’s first day on this movie.
Joe: What? That’s crazy.
Greg: The day before he filmed this scene, he was filming on air. That’s how crazy Nicolas Cage’s life is.
Joe: All right, I mean, Wednesday was cage cut air. Thursday this scene. And based off. You think they.
Greg: Were just like, what on earth do I do for a living? This is so ridiculous.
Joe: I don’t I don’t know why he feels like he lives in a world that I don’t live in.
Greg: Sure, like.
Joe: This is just normal for him. Man. That’s wild.
Greg: Can we talk for a second about when Nicolas Cage is in, like, the evil person layer, and he’s talking to Nick Cassavetes and like his.
Joe: Old.
Greg: Henchmen, think that he’s cast a Troy and he’s kind of, like, pretending like he’s this bad guy in the lair. This brought to mind the rock, actually, when Nicolas Cage is trying to be tough, but he clearly isn’t, and he’s, like, totally faking.
Joe: Yeah, that.
Greg: He it’s appropriate for him to be in this place. Here is him talking to Nick Cassavetes when they reunite.
Joe: Oh, man. You scared me, man.
Clip: All right, all right.
Greg: You know, that’s Nick Cassavetes kissing Nicolas Cage, and he’s not stoked that he’s being kissed by Nick.
Joe: I mean, he’s like, all right.
Greg: Is. Ha ha is the thing that was all over the world in the 90s. I don’t know if you remember that, but in the 90s, that was an awkward laugh that everybody did.
Clip: You know, I never should have told you those bombs. It’s my curse. I can’t say no to a friend. You can’t say no to money. And that’s my other curse. Drug dealer. It’s a matter for you.
Greg: Drug dealer.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: It’s so entertaining. Yeah. And then he gets drugged. He starts saying the title of the movie over and over and over again with Nick Cassavetes. This is Nicolas Cage going off script.
Clip: So once we kidnap a super cop, then what?
Clip: Jamie.
Clip: Surgery. I’d like to take his face.
Clip: Off.
Clip: Yeah.
Clip: And if you excuse me.
Clip: I have to use the little voice. We.
Greg: We are at this moment in the scene. John Woo yells cut! They don’t stop filming, though. And Nick Cassavetes, who his dad is famous for Improvization not being method. Really just catching what’s happening in the room on camera. That was his whole thing. Kind of indie filmmaker. He and Nicolas Cage just keep talking as if they’re in character.
Greg: And they were just joking around, but they happen to be filming cats.
Clip: You want to take his face? Yes. His face. Open your eyes. No skin coming off.
Clip: The face.
Clip: Off.
Greg: John, we were in the commentary said they did this for five minutes.
Joe: And, they kept.
Greg: Saying face off for five minutes. And then when we were editing it, we realized the footage was there, and we if we put ominous music behind it, we realized, oh, that’s actually kind of a cool scene.
Joe: It works because it sells him as Castor Troy.
Greg: Yeah. Yeah.
Joe: Being the crazy sociopath that we know him to be from the beginning of this. So, yeah.
Greg: He goes to his room and he lays down on his bed in the funniest way a human being could lay down on a bed.
Joe: This movie becomes.
Greg: A farce for a second.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: And then he falls off the bed because this is where it’s a farce. Yeah. And then he looks in the mirror. And this is how deep this movie gets. He just starts saying, I’m not me. I mean, I’m not me.
Clip: I’m me, not me.
Greg: So ridiculous. It’s so ridiculous. Gina Gershon comes in and slaps him.
Joe: Yeah, and I missed their different audio of, John Travolta’s voice in there, too. So you kind of get a bouncing back. So. Yeah.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: And that’s interesting about being punched in the face, because I think that’s when she slaps him. Was the first time he’s hit in the face.
Greg: Oh, interesting. Yeah. He’s touched his face 87 times at that point in the movie.
Joe: Oh my God. Yeah. Drinking game. If you touch your face in this movie. Yeah. Take a drink. Because it’s so hilarious.
Greg: So then he meets his son.
Greg: This isn’t explained at all, but John Travolta and like the rest of the government agency, they show up to just completely shoot out the whole place. And Nicolas Cage is trying to not kill any of the good guys because he’s also one of the good guys.
Joe: Okay.
Greg: Yeah. And he’s also trying to keep the kid safe.
Greg: Who he has learned is Castor Troy’s son. Yeah. And they put on headphones on to the kid so that he is listening to Somewhere Over the Rainbow while people are getting shot around him.
Joe: Yeah. That’s awesome. Shades of the gray man. So maybe the Gray man borrowed this from, It all.
Greg: Comes back to the Gray Man for.
Joe: You. Yes.
Greg: I don’t know if we even have to say this, but we will get to the Gray man.
Joe: One of my favorite action movies ever made.
Greg: Netflix. We love you. For the budgets, you’re putting behind movies that are made for us.
Joe: Yeah, exactly.
Greg: And maybe no one else.
Joe: Probably.
Greg: Okay, so this is really interesting. I have some more audio to play of John Woo in his commentary.
Greg: He’s talking about this scene where the boy is watching all this happen, and he has this music in his head. And he said the reason he wanted to do that was because movies and music were something that really helped him feel hope when he was a kid. And so here is him talking about that scene.
Clip: You know, as I was grow up in a very bad neighborhood, you know, where, we were living with, you know, a lot of gangs, the, you know, drug dealers, the whole school, you know, they kind of area. So I always feel like I was living in hell. So I never, I always, you know, tried to escape.
Clip: But, you know, I always, you know, going to the theater, what is theater? And the other thing that the church did, the two places. And I have found my heaven when I was in a theater. I love to watch a musical because the musical gave me a lot of hope and a lot of dream and a lot of love, you know?
Clip: So, that’s why I think of the scene as a little bring back my, you know, child who has the memory.
Joe: It’s another moment in a movie where the director’s intent and then the what actually happened are very divergent to me. I’m sure. Like, it’s creepy. It’s a weird scene. Yeah, but it’s also like trying to shield the kid from the violence of the world. It’s impossible to, like erupting around him. So I don’t know it’s it’s a great scene but what he’s describing and what, what is happening in the movie are very different.
Greg: I found this to be so sweet and it’s so hard to think like a really sweet man who’s trying to say something like this makes face off.
Joe: Yep.
Greg: But operatic is definitely a word for these. The movies that he makes.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: You know, if he loved going to the theater and seeing musicals when he was a kid. He is definitely doing that with operatic violence. Violence? Yeah. But what is it about it that makes it just like well this is fun. It’s almost is the, this is the trick that John Wick does as well. Yeah. It should be horrifying.
Greg: Yet there’s something about it that is operatic and kind of like okay, it’s it’s video game. It’s not.
Joe: Real.
Greg: It’s making a point.
Joe: Yeah. I remember that in the killer because the end of the killer. He’s being pursued by a cop. And by the end they have kind of formed an alliance together and kind of a mutual respect. Yeah. As the cop is chasing this killer because he lives by a code. Right. And if I think of his action scenes a way that you have musical numbers and musicals, I’m watching.
Joe: I can kind of see that. And it probably doesn’t hold up to today’s action. The same way of like, you know, John Wick and what it does and you know, some of these things. But like the killer there were things I had never seen.
Greg: Yeah. Yeah.
Joe: As an action, you know, fan. Sure. Well, I was like, what is this? This is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen. Yeah. And so I can I can see it from that perspective of his action being kind of that the musical numbers in a musical.
Greg: Almost so creative. So creative. Great story about the screenwriters who had written this movie. It was very sci fi ish movie.
Greg: In like 1993, 1992, there was some theater in LA where they went to go see a movie and a trailer for, I think Hard Boiled played before the movie, and they completely freaked out over this trailer, so much so that they went to the movie again the next day so they could see the trailer again. And then a couple of weeks later, hardboiled played in LA and they went to go see it at this theater.
Greg: And the two people who wrote this movie, after Hard Boiled, they looked at each other and said, we’ve written a John Woo movie. We should get John Woo to direct it. And at that point, Joel Silver was attached to this script, and he reached out to John Woo and said, the writers really want you to direct this. Can we talk?
Greg: And John Woo turned it down because it was so sci fi. And he’s like, this isn’t for me. And then they they toned down all the sci fi and Michael Douglas became the producer of this movie.
Joe: Interesting.
Greg: He reached out to John Weil and they all flew up to Vancouver to talk to him and John Woo was making something like a TV show or something, and he was exhausted. And they talked at him for three hours about what this movie was, is now in 1996, I think. And John, we was so exhausted. He didn’t say anything in the meeting.
Greg: And so then they left. They were going to meet up again the next morning and John Woo went up to Michael Douglas, shook his hand and said, I know I didn’t say much in the meeting yesterday. I’m so exhausted from the thing I’m working on, but you can trust me that I’ll make a great movie. And Michael Douglas, like, winked at him and said, oh, I know you’ll make a great movie.
Greg: I’ve got a good nose for these sorts of things. And it was on.
Joe: That’s awesome. That’s the whole deal. Yeah.
Greg: Can I say one more thing about that shoot out?
Joe: Yeah. I’ve way too.
Greg: Long. Way too long. And the studio wanted to cut it down and John Woo said, this is so important to me because he’s going to be listening to the song. And so he said I’ll pay for the scene with my money. And so they continued filming it. And then when the movie came out the studio had decided it was such a good movie that they didn’t, they would pay for whatever John Woo did.
Greg: But it’s way too long. This stretch of the movie is just impossibly long.
Joe: Yeah. We haven’t even really gotten into that part of the movie where John Travolta as Castor Troy is assumed the role in the family. Yeah. Then we move into the third act, where John Travolta as Castor Troy kills his boss.
Greg: While he looks at him and he, the boss, has a heart attack.
Greg: And it can’t be overstated that everything that happens in this movie has like an amazing Tony Scott sound effect as well.
Joe: Yes.
Greg: Ten out of ten.
Joe: And then they have to go to the funeral. Right. Which gives us the excuse for John Woo Dove’s to be involved. And so John Travolta’s there with his family and Nicolas Cage is coming to confront them. And that’s where we kind of have the final battle scene. You have Nicolas Cage as Sean Archer, walking through seagulls and doves in slow motion as they fly out of his way.
Joe: So any time you’re watching a John Wayne movie, just look for the birds like they’re there. Really, they’re always there.
Greg: So, yeah, it’s after the funeral. Nicolas Cage is sitting there staring at the crucifixion scene, and then John Travolta as the bad guy walks in. And do we need to talk about what he sounds like when he’s walking in?
Joe: Absolutely.
Clip: Oh, gosh.
Clip: Oh.
Clip: God. My knees could be used to those layers. To this rose, to the sorrow.
Clip: Isn’t this religious? Oh.
Clip: Yes. The eternal battle between good and evil, saint and sinner. But you’re still not having any fun.
Greg: And with doves flying everywhere.
Greg: They start having a shootout inside this church.
Joe: So many filmmakers could learn a lesson around slow motion and sound effects from John Woo.
Greg: I think what we’re learning is so many people have learned.
Joe: Yes. Yeah.
Greg: I mean, I bet this goes back to like Clint Eastwood movies. I know we go back to those, but I bet this is like a Western trope, you know? I decided this week, though that we need a name for this.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: I want to call them boom shoes. How do you feel about the term boom shoes?
Joe: I’m in. Okay.
Greg: I think most every great bad movie should have boom shoes that somehow.
Joe: Yeah. I always appreciate when you have unnecessary, impossible sound effects that accompany putting on jackets, walking, anything. It’s just a just to me, amplifies the scene. So good. It’s just like, this is the kind of movie we’re watching. This is my kind of movie, so.
Greg: It’s so great. Boom! Shoes. You got to walk in with some boom shoes.
Joe: Yeah, and it got it. It’s got to be slow motion. Like, this is where. Yeah, I think Tony Scott and John Woo yeah. Have heightened it to an art form 100%. So it’s so good as I just love it so much.
Greg: I also wanted to point out in that scene that goes way too long, where they’re the shootout before the funeral, they don’t go to slow motion much in that. But then once we get to the rest of the movie.
Joe: It’s a different story.
Greg: It’s a different story and I appreciate it.
Joe: Yeah a lot of John Woo’s like his slow motion isn’t in the action. It’s like in the lead up to the action.
Greg: No. Yeah it’s a crescendo.
Joe: So there’s like moments where it’s like a hand reaching for a gun, or it’s Tom cruise where there’s, like, wind on his face in a building where there is no wind. And like, you know, the hair is in slow. Like, those are the moments to me. That’s the John. Woo slo mo. It is. It’s just building the tension in a scene.
Greg: Yeah, I think it could be done a little bit more subtly.
Joe: Yeah. Subtle is not. Is his calling card? No, not at all.
Greg: But yeah, I completely agree. So they have this shootout and then we get to a classic John Woo thing where they’re standing very close to each other. And there’s a big mirror for some reason inside this church. Double sided mirror.
Joe: Yes.
Greg: And they are on both sides of the double sided mirror. And they’re pointing guns at each other. And when we see their perspective, they are looking at themselves in the mirror.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Because that is the actual person that’s on the other side of the mirror that they’re about to shoot. It’s a beautiful moment.
Joe: It’s a beautiful moment in a mirror that I don’t know, that actually exists in the real world of, like, who would have two mirrors like that? That would be.
Greg: But right there in a church. Yeah.
Joe: Yeah. Don’t worry about it. No, I wouldn’t worry about it.
Greg: Up up up up up up up. Can we walk through what happens in this standoff?
Joe: Yes.
Greg: They are standing very close to each other after a couple more shootings at each other. They break the mirror and then John Allen shows up.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: John Allen is now in between them. There is also like one of the bad guys henchmen there.
Greg: And then Gina Gershon shows up with another henchman. They’re holding two guns now and everybody’s like pointing at a bunch of different people. And who’s going to start this? And if I read this right, Gina Gershon started.
Joe: This I think. So she’s.
Greg: Ready for things to.
Joe: Happen. Yeah, she’s ready for action.
Greg: John Allen doesn’t have a gun, so she grabs a chair and just completely knocks.
Joe: Out John.
Greg: Travolta with this chair. Total game changer.
Joe: This chair. Yeah. This is also the scene at the end here where they’re shooting handguns. And then all of a sudden, John Travolta and Nicolas Cage have machine gun handgun. Just like shooting everywhere, right? Indiscriminately. That was a surprise to me that their handguns magically turned into machine gun. And so.
Greg: We’ve all been.
Joe: There, though. Yeah. Yeah, obviously that’s pretty common.
Greg: This is also a scene where there are so many shots of guns going off in slow motion.
Greg: And birds everywhere.
Greg: They never show a bird getting hit.
Joe: No they’re magical.
Greg: There are bullets flying everywhere and there’s like three dozen doves in the area. Not one bird is harmed. No John Woo calls it out in the commentary is like well I mean, we had to have doves in here, right?
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: It’s my calling.
Joe: Card.
Greg: So this church is run on a beach. Yeah. What happens then, Joe.
Joe: Oh, then we are in a boat chase on the water. Yeah.
Greg: Are you ready to have the conversation that needs to happen about boat chases in movies?
Joe: Yes, absolutely.
Greg: They jump in these boats.
Greg: What’s Joe’s guy Tuckers like response to. Oh it’s there’s going to be a boat chase.
Joe: I makes I like boat chases.
Greg: Okay. You’re generally pleased.
Joe: I’m generally pleased to see it.
Greg: Finally we disagree on something. I am generally displeased that we’re doing this because I think boat chases are usually pretty lackluster.
Joe: Did you see the one in this movie? Because it’s not.
Greg: Well, it’s kind of nice because they have those aerial shots above them, and the wake that they’re leaving is kind of beautiful, and they’re moving fast. And every other thing that’s floating on whatever body of water this is, is not moving at all. Basically.
Joe: Don’t worry about that.
Greg: So they are going by super fast and like swirling around things and it seems like they’re going pretty fast.
Joe: Yeah. And they catch up with like one person at the head and they, like, run into something. And then all of a sudden they’re right next to each other again.
Greg: Next to each other. Yeah. It’s incredible.
Joe: It’s amazing.
Greg: So if you are in a boat chase, what’s the logical first move? If you are in a boat next to someone that you’re trying to catch, you start smashing into them. Yeah. Just like traffic, right?
Joe: Yeah. Like you’re in a car. You’re trying to, like, run them off the road, but they’re not really on a road, so it doesn’t really make sense. Like, you could probably shoot em or.
Greg: Audible eye rolls happening for me at this moment in the movie. Just yawning, wondering what else is happening in the world. Probably checking my social feeds.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Total apathy. But one of those hits is pretty amazing. It happens in super slow motion, and it almost like tips the boat over. It’s like the real deal.
Joe: And then they’re on the same boat together. That’s. Well.
Greg: Hold on. You just skipped eight steps after this happens. And I’m like, interesting. Okay, that was a pretty strong hit. Now one of them crosses over in front of the other one. And like Nicolas Cage, has to, like, jump the wake of John Travolta’s boat and he jumps the most underwhelming nine inches above the water. And I’m back to you checking my socials.
Greg: I’m out again. They’ve probably traveled, what, like a mile on the water at this point. Then they start shooting at each other.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: How embarrassed do you think both of them were that this didn’t occur to them before this?
Greg: Wait a minute. I had, like, my mini machine gun right here this whole time.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: What was the whole wake jumping thing?
Joe: I think it was like we hired people that could jump over weeks. So, yeah, this scene is hard for me because it is. There are few scenes in this movie, but this one was the most glaring of it is so clearly stuntmen. And then and there are a few other scenes in it where it’s like clearly wearing a bad wig and hiding their face behind this one is the worst.
Joe: Yeah. And then it’s like, close up on the both of them driving. Long shot. Clearly, stunt man.
Greg: Is a movie from the 90s that is now available in 4K, and this is the one thing that is especially egregious. You can see some wires when they’re attached to wires. Sometimes they used to like cut out or paint out some of the wires sometimes, but sometimes they didn’t.
Joe: Sometimes they didn’t.
Greg: In this movie, they often use CG tech to put Nicolas Cage’s face on the stuntman. But there are so many times that they didn’t. Yeah.
Greg: Probably not noticeable on like a DVD back in the day. Yeah, a little bit more noticeable on Blu-ray now that it’s in 4K. Oh my gosh.
Joe: Yeah, there were some rough moments which just made me love it even more. But I was like, oh, that’s that’s not them at all. They’re not even trying.
Greg: Right? Yeah. Then they bump into a police boat that’s pretty big. It’s like a two floor police boat. There’s probably like nine police officers on this boat saying you need to slow down. John Travolta is able to shoot everyone on this boat immediately.
Greg: I think he also shot into Nicolas Cage’s boat. And like opened up a gas line.
Greg: Forces Nicolas Cage to go through the police boat.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: And an amazing amazing stunt.
Joe: Yeah. Perfectly. Doesn’t get hurt. Doesn’t slow down just like barrels right through this other boat. Right, right. Everyone dies and jumps off and it’s it’s perfect.
Greg: It could not be more noticeable. This boat chase starts after the two hour mark of this movie, by the way.
Greg: John Travolta is not able to shoot anybody in this movie. Well, but he can from his speeding boat.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: He can’t shoot Nicolas Cage obviously. No, but I have to tell you a story that the screenwriters told from this moment in the movie when they were, like running and shooting at each other to the boats. Nicolas Cage asked one of the writers, we’ve been filming this movie for six months. John Travolta and I, our characters have been shooting at each other for six months.
Greg: And why is it we can never hit each other? And the screenwriter stands there and is trying to think of a reason. And before he can think of one, Nicolas Cage goes, oh, I get it. Because they’re secretly in love with each other. Okay, got it.
Joe: Okay.
Greg: And they just go with that.
Joe: Okay.
Greg: That’s what it’s like to make a movie with Nicolas Cage. Just don’t answer it. Let him come up with something.
Joe: Yeah. I mean, what’s going to be better than that? Answer.
Greg: Not.
Joe: Nothing is going to be better.
Greg: So now Nicolas Cage crashes through the police boat, which obviously causes the police boat to explode.
Joe: Yes.
Greg: Which is about the moment that I wake up in. And I start to appreciate that this boat chase scene is the first boat chase scene I’ve ever been interested in in my life.
Joe: Carl, you got me.
Greg: So now his boat is on fire and the fuel is leaking. So obviously Nicolas Cage needs to jump over into John Travolta’s boat. But he’s he isn’t able to get all the way to the boat. He’s like holding on to the side. Yeah. And then he jumps in and they start fighting. So now they’re having a fight in the boat.
Greg: The boat that he jumped out of crashes into another boat. So of course both of those boats explode.
Joe: Yeah. On impact.
Greg: It’s like a big tanker or something.
Greg: Now he’s on the boat with Travolta and we have a fistfight scenario for a second before Travolta grabs an anchor and start swinging it at Nicolas Cage. And this anchor makes an amazing amount of noise as it’s piercing the air as he’s swinging it. It is unbelievable. So Nicolas Cage obviously needs to get out of the boat. He grabs a chain and now he’s waterskiing on the water holding on to this chain.
Joe: That’s right. That’s right.
Greg: At this point it’s like this is incredible. There was a real dip there for a while and this movie for about 30 to 40 minutes.
Greg: And now I’m back. Yeah I do just need to pause for a second. When he was waterskiing next to the boat. John was that that was the most dangerous stunt in the movie Because what was happening when he was doing that was the way the boat’s made. It kept like grabbing his leg. And the guy almost got sucked into the boat.
Joe: Crazy.
Greg: A couple times. And there’s one shot, I guess, where you can see his leg, like, whip under. So he gets back and John was like, are you okay. Are you okay. He goes I’m fine, don’t worry about it. But when his leg whipped under the boat that one time, it makes his leg swell up so much that they can’t he can’t get his pants off.
Joe: Oh my God. That’s crazy.
Greg: They have to, like, cut his pants off because he’s swelling so much. And he had he was, like, out of commission for a few days.
Joe: That’s wild.
Greg: So, like, real people are making these movies.
Greg: It’s so so so incredible. Okay. So now they’re headed towards the beach. They hit a thing. The thing makes the boat fly up in the air.
Joe: Yeah. They are miraculously flying through the air. I think there’s an explosion behind them if I remember.
Greg: Yeah. The boat flies up, and when it lands on the ground, obviously a boat hitting the ground is going to make the most amazing explosion in history.
Joe: Yeah. And then they kind of landed the most miraculously perfect spot in the sand between, like, another boat. Yeah. Yeah. And something else on the ground. Right? Right. And they’re safe on the ground.
Greg: But as they’re flying through the air, what’s really happening is like, it’s stunt guys connected to a cable, and the cable is pulling them so that they’re, like, crazy midair flailing. Water is flying everywhere. The boat is really behind them, and then it explodes.
Joe: To real explosion.
Greg: Real explosion? There’s no CG in this shot. This is a thing that has really, really happened. The only CGI that they did in this moment, and not for the whole moment, is they CG put Travolta in cages faces on the stunt people.
Joe: Which is interesting.
Greg: Clearly they didn’t really do for a lot of the shots because you can totally tell it’s not them flying to the air.
Joe: That’s wild. I for some reason thought that they had done the stunt people flying through the air and then kind of yeah blew up the, the boat and then kind of superimposed them together or something like that. Yeah. That’s why that they did it in one shot.
Greg: I’m assuming that as they were flying through the air at that very moment, America won every award that a country can win in the Life awards. I don’t know what competition was happening, but at this very moment, America won all of the awards that were given out. Yeah. For like, the next decade, A-grade. It is the greatest conclusion to what started out as the most ho hum set piece.
Greg: This movie just entirely won me over at this moment, and this last time I watched it, there were some low points. I was questioning some things for a while there. Like, was this movie as great as I thought it was? Yeah. And this is the reason I left this movie. This last part is just like, okay, well we’re back.
Greg: Everybody wins. So they land on the beach. There’s like a spear gun.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Nicolas Cage is trying to shoot John Travolta. John Travolta grabs the top of it. So the spear doesn’t dislodge or whatever.
Joe: Right?
Greg: And then he starts cutting his face, saying, every time you look in the mirror, you’re going to see this or whatever. Pretty disturbing. Yeah. John Woo’s idea. Weird. This somewhere Over the Rainbow wasn’t playing well. He did it.
Joe: I know it should have been missed opportunity.
Greg: And then something happens and he’s speared and the bad guys finally died. John Travolta, then as he’s dying, starts singing a song. And the lyrics are ready for the big ride, baby. Is this a callback to something? As he was doing it, I was like, I don’t want to know where this came from. I want to think that John Travolta started improvising a song called ready for the Big Ride, baby, as his character was dying.
Greg: That’s all I need to know. America has already won all the awards here.
Joe: Yeah, exactly.
Greg: This is just for icing on the cake here.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: So, yeah, they’re able to focus on that. We call that proceeding based on.
Joe: Yeah. And then my favorite part of this entire movie is the last scene.
Greg: So what happens in that scene, Joe?
Joe: So you have the big reveal of John Travolta coming back as himself.
Greg: Right back to his house.
Joe: Yeah. So it is set up to be like they’re surprised that he’s coming back. Sure. Even though his wife was integral in the part of him getting the surgery, sure. To get his face.
Greg: She had to check her email or whatever. Yeah. So I’m distracted by her by a screen.
Joe: And so then, you know, wife and daughter hug him. Oh you think it’s going to end there. And he’s like but wait there’s a kid here. That was cast Troy choice on this. Now our son. And everyone is just okay with it. But I’m totally fine with them like oh come on. And and the daughter takes him off and the wife hugs him and like credits.
Joe: My favorite part is like they have like this really tender moment where the family is back together. Right. And this kid is just standing there outside the door waiting.
Greg: It’s what the rest of his childhood is going to be like with his family always on the outside.
Joe: Exactly. Cut to the years and years of therapy that this kid is going to need to feel like a real part of this family. Totally. But it’s so ridiculous. And it just works. It’s like, that’s the moment. That’s like chef’s kiss. You did it.
Greg: Totally, totally.
Joe: The landing. Whatever else you can say.
Greg: I think the main reason this works is because they have already just. John wooed us to death. Yeah. There have been so many illogical leaps.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: That even the sentimentality in this movie gets John wooed.
Joe: Like.
Greg: Yeah. All right. That seems like a thing. Sure. What is it like?
Joe: Adam’s five.
Greg: Hey. Show him his new room. Like, did they not change Michael’s room at all?
Joe: Probably not.
Greg: So he’s just gonna slot right in there?
Joe: Yeah. Your new name is Michael. And welcome to the family. Right.
Greg: Oh my gosh. The older sister, who, by the way, has no eye makeup on now.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: So I’m assuming school is going well.
Joe: Yeah. Turn the corner.
Greg: Everybody’s smiling for the maybe the first time in the movie.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: John Travolta, John Allen and the daughter. And we haven’t had a chance to talk about Oliver Wood. He is the director of photography on this movie. Okay. He was the director of photography on Die Hard to a movie that also had a helicopter that chase down the plane, by the way.
Joe: Yeah. So.
Greg: But also did you notice the amount of smoke or maybe steam was in the air as John Travolta was walking back into the house. It looked like the whole neighborhood was on fire out their door. Oh I’m assuming this is steam from the pipes from Die Hard two. We’re still in the prop room and they’re able to get those.
Greg: This movie is beautiful, by the way. In so many ways. Oliver did an incredible job on this film. But I don’t know what on earth is happening outside the door here. Maybe the daughter’s now a drummer in a band, and the drum riser just has a.
Joe: Smoke.
Greg: Machine that’s on all the time, and the neighbors are pissed. Oh my gosh, it’s so funny. Maybe 4K also didn’t do the scene any favors because it is so hilarious how smoky and steamy it is. There’s a story behind this. The studio really wanted to change this movie a lot, and the writers and John will fight them on it.
Greg: Sorry, I’m going to derail for just a second. One thing they wanted to do was they wanted there to be a very graphic love scene between John Travolta and John Allen after the space swap, to show how disturbing it was that this had happened. They also wanted a very graphic love scene between Nicholas Cage and Gina Gershon. They really wanted that paralleling to happen, like while they really are in each other’s lives and because of the 90s and were a horrible studio, we need some love scenes.
Joe: Right?
Greg: They refused to do that. And John Woo said, no, I’m going to do a bunch of candles and like really up the romance, because that’s what John Allen’s diary is saying, that she wishes that she had had. And the reason he did candles is because he. The reason he did candles is because he loves the movie Barry Lyndon by Stanley Kubrick, obviously, which is a movie that was famously lit with only natural sources.
Greg: There was no, like, external lighting. And so it’s largely lit by candles. So of course, John was going to bring that into face off the way he did Lawrence of Arabia as well.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: But I think this is awesome. He’s like, no, we’re not going to do like a stupid sex scene. We’re just going to have it be more romantic because that’s what’s really happening here. We’re going to do it our way because we’re grown ups. And they’re making a grown up movie. Another thing the studio really wanted to do was not have John Allen.
Greg: They wanted him to have remarried and have a much younger actress be like the step mom to the kids. And so that way they could get like somebody who was a couple years older than the daughter to be the wife. So, like, as someone in their 20s, all right, you know, some hot young actress and John movie was like, what are you talking about?
Greg: The story here is between a married couple who have been through some things. That’s where this all. So we’re not going to do that. In fact, we’re gonna get John Allen. Oscar winner John Allen Reilly at this point was like 41. I love it. I love I love what they’re doing here. Here’s another thing the studio wanted in this moment, going back to the scene where he shows up with Adam, the five year old boy.
Greg: They said, audiences are going to hate that you show up with the kid. And he was like, no, that’s the whole thing. Like he gets a second chance. He doesn’t need the scar in his heart anymore where the bullet went through his shield. They literally told him, this is a cultural difference. That seems like something that would make sense in your culture, but won’t make sense in ours.
Greg: Audiences are going to hate this. So they had him film it both ways. We’re doing they had him film it without the kid, and then they got a ton of comment cards. Like, I really thought the kid was going to show up at the end. Seemed like the good guy would be raising the kid. So he got enough budget for half a day to go back and reshoot it with the kids showing up.
Joe: Awesome.
Greg: And I’m assuming most of that budget went into this smoke out there.
Joe: Yeah, smoke got the doors.
Greg: So John Woo. I think in the commentary he was kind of saying look at how ridiculous these people were. They were saying it was a cultural difference. And he was like, no, this is like just human.
Joe: Beings.
Greg: Want to make sure human beings are taking care of. I don’t think that’s a cultural thing.
Joe: Oh, yeah. Because my favorite part about that scene is it’s that he comes in, says hi to his family first. Right, right. And I’m just imagining the shot from the kid’s perspective of, like, standing there awkwardly waiting to be waved into the end of the frame.
Greg: What’s the conversation out the door between John Travolta and Adam? Like, hey, give me a minute to sell the idea. Okay.
Joe: Yeah, yeah, just wait here. I gotta I gotta talk. That’s a box. It’s like I’m.
Greg: That’s so funny. If they wanted him to walk in with him, that’s a full day of reshoots, and they could afford that.
Joe: Exactly.
Greg: That’s so incredible. And the daughter does the face thing.
Greg: To Adam. Yeah. Love touch that scene to him. And we call that the left touch. And I really wish the kid was like what.
Joe: I’m out. Yeah. Just walks out the door.
Greg: Runs into the one of the fires.
Greg: Okay. Well we often talk about actors and directors and the writers. We talked about the writers quite a bit. There are a couple other people that really we should thank for this movie. And it’s the people that we love in great bad movies. The stunt coordinator and the second unit director. In this case, the second unit director was this guy named William H.
Greg: Burton junior, who’s worked on a few good movies. It seems like the real star for a Josh guy. Tucker and Greg Swineherd type was the stunt coordinator. And this one, this guy named Brian Spurs. And he is the one who invented all of these action scenes. John Woo said he’s such a nice, unassuming guy. And then he would just come at you with the most crazy ideas.
Greg: And because he was the stunt coordinator, he would say he. And then here’s how we’ll do it. It’s not just the crazy idea, but also like how to do it. So that crazy shot where they’re flying through the air and the boat is flying behind them. He knew how to do it. And so William H. Burton is yelling action as they film that.
Greg: And the stunt coordinator invented it and like, rigged it all up and got it to show that it was safe. John Woo was there, but not yelling action because he’s not the one who yells action for that shot. So Brian Summers, he designed all the action scenes, and then he also designed action scenes for men in Black. Inspector gadget, Mission impossible two, unbreakable, vanilla Sky, Minority Report, Live Free or Die Hard.
Joe: Interesting. So it got some bonafides?
Greg: Totally. Yeah. Shane Black’s the predator.
Joe: Wind talkers.
Greg: Maybe the wrong kind of guy for the stunts in that movie. Yeah. He himself was also a very successful second unit director with X-Men two. With paycheck. We’ll get the paycheck. Are you kidding me? Eagle eye. We’ll get the eagle eye. Yeah. He worked with James Mangold, who is getting a lot of praise right now for the Bob Dylan movie.
Greg: But he also made X-Men Origins Wolverine. He did night and day with Tom cruise. So he’s worked with some great directors. He worked on surrogates with Bruce Willis, Iron Man three, Ghostbusters Afterlife, which is a movie I loved. He did the venom movies, which might be like a logical extension of Face Off in our modern world.
Joe: Yeah, I can see that.
Greg: I haven’t seen those movies, but from what I’ve heard, they’re bonkers and face off ish.
Joe: Yeah, I’ve seen the first one and I liked it, but I could not remember it. I don’t remember anything that happened other than Tom Hardy. Is amazing.
Greg: In it. Do you think we’ll get the venom?
Joe: I think so. Yeah, probably due to do another superhero movie. Yeah. So yeah.
Greg: The last movie I want to mention that Brian Sommers worked on, which is also another logical extension of this movie. Maybe is the movie This means War, which we’ve talked about before. But it has Hardy. It has Chris Pine.
Joe: Reese Witherspoon.
Greg: Reese Witherspoon, directed by MC gee, who is maybe a John Woo acolyte.
Joe: Yes, I could see that.
Greg: Anyways, nice work, Brian Summers. I’m sure John Woo gets a lot of credit here, but we think you should get some more credit than you probably have gotten because if this stuff was your idea.
Joe: Oh my gosh.
Greg: That’s pretty much the thing that won me over. Not necessarily the performances although they were great. John Woo and his editor, they’re incredible Brian Summers. Let’s work on these action scenes.
Joe: Absolutely.
Greg: Joe, it seems to me that there’s a chance that people who are listening to this might not.
Joe: Have seen Face-Off. That’s possible. That’s weird.
Greg: But they might also be walking through like an old school video store and trying to figure out what movie they should rent tonight because it’s 2025. And that’s the thing that still happens on everybody else.
Joe: Yeah, obviously.
Greg: I’m wondering if, as they’re walking down the aisles of a Blockbuster Video or something like that, and they if they were to pick up Face Off on DVD, we’ll say no, they pick it up on VHS probably at first.
Joe: Yeah. Probably better.
Greg: Maybe it’s some Betamax.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: I think it’s time to give a synopsis of the movie that that would be on the back of that box. That’s right. It’s time for the back of the box.
Joe: It’s the back of the box. When Castor Troy Nicholas Cage plants a bomb that threatens all of Los Angeles. Sean Archer John Travolta must go undercover to find his location as Castor Troy. Using the latest technology. Sean Archer becomes Castor Troy. He must fight his own demons and himself as Castor. Troy blackmails the doctors into making him Sean Archer.
Joe: Under the masterful hand of action legend John Woo. This explosive and philosophical action movie runs the gamut from the sublime to the incredible, to the unbelievable. Face off with your fears and see what dreams may come. Oh my God.
Greg: Wait, am I supposed to go rent? What dreams may come with Robin Williams now.
Joe: Instead, maybe.
Greg: This is the secret studio ambition that, like, promote a different movie on the back of this box.
Joe: Exactly.
Greg: All right, I think I rent it. Absolutely. Yeah. And honestly, you’re too good at this. That’s ridiculous. I don’t know why you don’t work in marketing for movies.
Joe: I know, seriously.
Greg: But you know, what would be even better is if we could get the actual real Joe Skye Tucker guns ablaze and.
Joe: Pew pew pew!
Greg: Let’s get to the real back of the box.
Joe: This movie is bonkers. Like, legitimately, ridiculously crazy. It makes no sense. And it doesn’t need to. If you were there in 1997 and I said, John Woo, John Travolta and Nicolas Cage, all you would have asked is where and when. This movie has it all. 1990s action, unchecked casual sexual harassment, doves flying in slow motion, and actors and a director working all in completely different films.
Joe: Does it hold up? Does it need to? Or is this peak cinema? All I can say is that I love this film dearly, and I’m willing to suffer the all the consequences of this choice.
Greg: Amazing. That’s one of the best real backs.
Joe: In the box.
Greg: It’s incredible. Does this movie hold up? Does it need to? I like, do you answer the question with a question?
Joe: Exactly.
Greg: So why don’t we talk about the box office and then we can talk about some reviews here. This movie cost $80 million.
Joe: Okay.
Greg: Massive budget for 1997. This movie made 245 million internationally.
Joe: Okay. So made this money and then some.
Greg: Yeah. Or globally I should say 112 here. 133 international. So this movie’s a hit. But we should have had a sequel in the works immediately. I don’t know what happened there. Joe, what do you think? The Rotten Tomatoes critics score on Face Off is.
Joe: I think it’s surprisingly high. And I may have seen it. So I’m. This is a more of an educated guess with. But I think it’s probably near 70.
Greg: It feels like a 70.
Joe: But realistically probably like 80, 85. That’s kind of my gut.
Greg: 93.
Joe: That’s feels really high.
Greg: It does. And actually it’s ticked up one percentage since the last time I looked at it a couple of years ago. I remember distinctly being in 92. So, I think they’ve added a handful of reviews that have picked it up a little bit. All right. But interestingly, the audience score or now the popcorn meter has not changed in the last couple of years.
Greg: What do you think the audience score of Face Off is?
Joe: Feels like like an 85. I’m going to stick with that.
Greg: Yeah, that’s a solid guess. It’s 82.
Joe: Okay.
Greg: It’s a rare moment for us where the audience score is lower than the critics score.
Joe: Yeah. The score feels closer to what this movie is than the critic score. But I don’t know. I’m curious why you’ll tell me what the some of the critics thought of this one.
Greg: Well, 98 critics reviewed it, and over 250,000 audience members reviewed it. So that might be all right. Let’s start with our local paper, Seattle Times. Keith Samant. And I have to say that this is the funniest review.
Joe: Okay.
Greg: Face off is a full blooded moviegoing experience. It’s 100% movie, two and a half stars out of four.
Joe: Nailed it.
Greg: Great job, as always, Keith. Let’s see. And I don’t mean that sarcastically. He did do a good job in this, actually.
Joe: Pretty dead on. Yeah.
Greg: Janet Maslin of The New York Times. Here comes a mega movie that actually delivers what mega movies promise. Andy Seller of the USA today. It could be argued that this movie’s callousness towards human life is nihilistic and nasty. But woo takes everything so absurdly far that audiences laugh at what horrified them.
Joe: Moments before. I. I would say fair.
Greg: That’s kind of the John Wick ification, you know, of.
Joe: Like what?
Greg: Oh, why am I going along with this?
Joe: Yeah, exactly.
Greg: Barbara Gasser of the San Francisco Examiner, which is a paper that I subscribe to, my house. It was an afternoon paper. That’s it. So you got the latest news in the afternoon? Right in the San Francisco area. Style overwhelms any hope of discerning story or acting through the haze of burning, crashing, bleeding, and exploding fare. Time magazine says with Face Off, John Woo, the Hong Kong auteur, has made his smartest.
Greg: While this positively Woo’s iest American thriller.
Joe: Spot on, spot on no notes.
Greg: Robert Roden says I think I finally isolated what irritates me about this movie. It is the fact that it promotes the idea that you can indulge in hatred and vengeance with the positive results. Two and a half out of four stars.
Joe: That are positive. I guess that is a positive review.
Greg: This is a negative one according to Rotten Tomatoes.
Greg: I think this guy took it a little too seriously.
Joe: I think so too. Yeah.
Greg: Okay let’s get to Film Freak Central. Walter Cha says garbage of the finest vintage.
Joe: I don’t allow it.
Greg: Potentially that could be the name of our show.
Joe: Yeah, potentially. And then the next name.
Greg: Chris Barth, Santy of film critic.com, possibly the greatest and definitely the most exuberant action film to come out of the studio system in the 90s.
Joe: It feels a little like hyperbole to me, but I’ll allow it for now.
Greg: I wish I could kind of, like, really feel what 1997 felt like and where we were coming from, but it definitely is exuberant.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: All right. Time out magazine says Woo’s poetic, kinetic style has evolved, if not to the point of abstraction. Then to delirium. He makes a virtue of incredulity.
Joe: All right, I’ll allow it.
Greg: Making a virtue of incredulity. Sounds like great bad movies to me.
Joe: Yeah, exactly. Nailed it.
Greg: Los Angeles Times says it’s difficult to describe the jolt his films deliver when woo is on, and he is on with a vengeance here. Five out of five stars. Wow.
Joe: Feels a little generous but yeah I’ll allow it.
Greg: I don’t know I had a jolts when they were flying through the air.
Greg: Salon.com. Florid passionate, frequently hilarious and loaded with messy emotions that no one in his or her right mind should even attempt to explain. It’s operatic and it’s netball insanity.
Joe: That’s perfect.
Greg: It’s pretty good. Stephanie’s soccer wreck of Salon.com. Finally. From the San Francisco Chronicle. The morning news in San Francisco. We did not subscribe. Mike LaSalle said, this is grand moviemaking with grand acting five out of five stars.
Joe: Feels again a little generous, but I’ll allow it.
Greg: Absolutely. Absolutely. All right, Joe, is it time for us to get some drinking games for face off?
Joe: All right, so we have our star drinking games again. You don’t need to be drinking alcohol to be water, soda, coffee, tea. And again, I need that sound effect in everything that I do. And probably for all of my clothes when I put them on and when I take steps down the stairs, whatever it is.
Greg: Okay, here’s the left leg of your pants.
Joe: All right. Silent helicopter. Low flying helicopter. Oh, yeah. You’re drinking a few different times.
Greg: Few different times. Now, what happens if a silent helicopter happens twice? And what happens if that silent helicopter was also invisible?
Joe: You finishing your.
Greg: Drink? That’s a finish. Okay.
Joe: Yeah. I gave us a push in and enhance. Not. It’s not the classic one, but it’s one there in the operating room. And they’re doing kind of the on the monitors. Some of the really bad animations of what’s going to happen as they switch the bodies. You have a few different moments of when people share a slow motion look in the middle of chaos.
Joe: Slow motion looks in the middle of chaos. It’s kind of John moves thing.
Greg: So that’s just called a look.
Joe: Yeah. Order much of the normal scene.
Greg: It’s a redundant sense.
Joe: Yeah. I did put silent suffering and exploding and ringing in the ears, but I’m blanking on when that was. But I feel like there was a moment early in the in the movie when we have that. But I can not 100% now.
Greg: I’m assuming. Yes, but I can’t remember.
Joe: Opening credit scene locks in place with a sound. So we have.
Greg: The loud fabric.
Joe: Yes, loud fabric, a few different flashbacks. And this to his dying son and those sorts of things. A drink for that? Yeah. I did not give us the crazy CGI or bad CGI. There’s some CGI, but like we said, that’s really pretty straight with the the action scenes. So yeah, great bad shots are everywhere in this movie.
Greg: Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh.
Joe: It’s it’s it’s.
Greg: So insane how many times people are able to outrun a machine gun. Yeah.
Joe: This movie I do not have we do not have inexplicably wet streets, but we have inexplicably wet walls in the prison. So I gave you that one. It’s kind of gross. Okay, okay. There is no. Give us the room. And there is no Interpol. But that is ours.
Greg: So, side note, the crew got really sick while they were filming in that jail because it was really cold and wet.
Joe: Interesting. Yeah.
Greg: Should we get to some unique drinking games for this movie?
Joe: Unique? I have a lot. So every time there is John with slow mo. Take a drink. That’s my first crush.
Greg: You’re so brutal with the drinking games these days.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: No, I’m going to say any time there’s a slow clap, that whole.
Joe: That’s a good. That’s good. There’s a couple in this movie. It’s. Yeah. Awesome. Yeah. I have every time you have Nicolas Cage dancing and then follow along because I have a lot. Now every time Nicolas Cage is being kind of crazy. Take a drink. Okay. That’s another brutal one.
Greg: I’m not going to say every time you see doves.
Joe: Okay?
Greg: I am going to say every time you see doves in slow motion.
Joe: Okay? I know.
Joe: I have washing while putting on clothes or any time there are loud clothes or loud fabric. Yes, loud fabric, like a drink.
Greg: Okay. Any time they do the face touching thing.
Joe: Yeah. The love touch. Take a drink. Any time sparks fly during a gunfight. Take a drink.
Greg: Oh, that’s really good. Any time Nicolas Cage touches his face.
Joe: Oh, he does so much I have. That would do. Yeah, it’s kind of gross. I have anytime you see gold jewelry or gold guns, take a drink. Oh.
Greg: Anytime. John Travolta touches his face.
Joe: Oh, that’s a good one. There’s a lot of that in this. This is kind of goes along with, anytime John Travolta dances or acts crazy. Take a drink. Let’s get.
Greg: Any time they say the words face.
Joe: Off. Oh, that’s a really good one. I have any time. There’s just casual sexual harassment in the in the movie. Take a drink. Yeah, yeah.
Greg: Anytime people are talking to each other while pointing guns at each other.
Joe: Oh that’s awesome. I have anytime you see a bullet in slow motion leaving a gun, take a drink.
Greg: Yeah. Any time we cut to the bio cover unit set. How many do you think that is? Like six.
Joe: Probably. Yeah.
Greg: Yeah. That’s pretty I think. I think it’s a good one.
Joe: Yeah, yeah. I have anytime you feel uncomfortable with shots of Nicolas Cage’s chest hair, take a drink.
Greg: It’s a subjective drinking game. Yes, this is my last one. Any time someone’s hand is shaking. Oh, Nicolas Cage and John Allen both seem to be shaking a lot through this movie.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Can you see it in their hands?
Joe: Yeah, I have several that are kind of in the same vein. I have diving while shooting a gun, and then flipping while shooting a gun. Oh my gosh, the flipping.
Greg: What are they doing at the flipping?
Joe: I don’t know.
Greg: They’re getting they should have gotten shot while flipping.
Joe: Yeah. Oh, and then any time there’s a shootout and there’s like flying paper or broken glass and sparks like all at the same time. Okay, okay, take a drink and then my last one is any time it’s clearly a stunt man, an action scene. Oh, I.
Greg: Love that one. That’s a great one. It’s time for us to get to Joe’s trope Lightning Round, aka signs. You might be watching a great bad movie.
Joe: It’s not as many tropes as I thought. You have kind of shooting at each other and both run out of bullets or count the bullets. So there’s a couple moments like that in the movie, we have revenge. As the driver of the protagonist, we have a friend or family member or colleague, usually a person of color, who dies early in the film.
Joe: So we actually have two. We have CCH pounder and the Tito that are like Burned alive by Castor Troy. We have a charismatic bad guy and, antagonist have lots of explosions on impact for car crashes and boat crashes. We have medical care that’s given by, you know, a loved one and this one. Sure. I kind of gave this one close that fit perfectly.
Joe: So bodies that fit perfectly. It sure.
Greg: Makes sense.
Joe: Checking if a gun is loaded. And then we have and and you alluded to this but like the slow clap or the clapping of everyone in the room when they catch the bad guy. So those are, those are the trope lightning round for you.
Greg: Amazing. All right Joe. Oh my gosh it’s about to get real.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: You ready to answer some important questions about Face off?
Joe: I am okay, let’s do it.
Greg: Did face off hold up then.
Joe: I think it did.
Greg: I think it did too. Yeah. I was not near theaters. I was working up in Alaska when this movie came out, and so I rented it that fall, and I was talking to my friend Kathy Joe, who is not someone that you would think would be in the John Wayne movies. And she said, what are you doing tonight?
Greg: And I said, my roommates and I are watching Face Off. And she said, can you wait 30 minutes? I’ll be there soon. I was like, absolutely. So we held off for 30 minutes. So Kathy joking, come over. She shows up with two half gallons of ice cream. Awesome. And she’s just like, I’ve seen this movie twice. I love it so much, I’m gonna watch it.
Greg: So I think if Kathy Joe is in on this movie and bringing ice cream, I think it holds up. Then doesn’t hold up. Now. Amy’s.
Joe: It’s a little rough in spots, but I still love it.
Greg: I didn’t regret watching it. No, but rough spots?
Joe: Yeah, rough and stuff.
Greg: Yeah, it shows some age. This movie came out in 1997, so yeah. How are they? So the good guy in this movie.
Joe: Not that hard, but not it’s like a medium mid. Yeah. Yeah.
Greg: How are they. Saw the bad guy.
Joe: That they do. They do a pretty good job on way back in the office. And then even just the fact that they have to like face swap with him. So I think harder than they do the good guy.
Greg: Why is there romance in this movie, Joe?
Joe: I don’t know, it’s kind of to show how dead the marriage is, and that he has been so single mindedly focused on Castor Troy, and then Castor Troy is back and kind of brings that romance to their relationship. It’s weird. It’s I don’t know, the romance in this movie feels awkward and a little unpleasant. So yeah, I don’t know.
Joe: What’s your answer on this one?
Greg: I mean, it’s the reason for the movie. According to John Woo, that’s why he had her standing in between them at the end and that pointing guns at each other scene, he’s like, she is the central thing in this movie. I think that John Travolta has been through a trauma. He is not, you know, able to talk about what happened to his son.
Greg: He’s emotionally distant from his family, and the romance creates a safe place for him to be open about his emotions and work through his trauma. That’s why this room. It’s this.
Joe: Movie. I’ll allow it.
Greg: So I think you need to rewrite the back of the box to say that. Okay?
Joe: Okay. Joe, are we bad people for loving this movie? I 100%. There’s no question, right? Oh, no question.
Greg: Does it deserve a sequel?
Joe: So many sequels. I can’t believe there’s not a sequel to this movie.
Greg: I think a sequel ruins this movie yet. You’re right. And the guy who makes the, like, Godzilla versus Kong movies? Adam something is writing it. They’ve been working on it since, like they’ve been writing it since 2019.
Joe: Okay, well, I better be good then.
Greg: And Nicolas Cage has said publicly that Adam would have grown up by now. So the theory of the case is that this script is about Adam growing up, and maybe Adam looks like Nicolas Cage now.
Joe: Okay.
Greg: So maybe there’s a digitally de-aged Nicolas Cage in this.
Joe: Oh okay. There you Lord.
Greg: So anyways we’ll see. I think there shouldn’t be a sequel. I think it ruins it. Yeah. Does this movie deserve a prequel.
Joe: No no no no.
Greg: Prequels I agree Joe, I have a controversial potential new question edition this week.
Joe: Okay, sweet.
Greg: In reaction to your feelings about Top Gun Maverick, the last movie we talked about.
Greg: So I don’t know if this will move on, but I want to pose this question to you. Hold on. Potential new question.
Joe: All right.
Greg: Should Face-Off have been nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars.
Joe: Me? No, no. Not even close.
Greg: Hard disagree. I am a 1,000%.
Joe: Yes, I’m that guy.
Greg: All right, Joe, how can this movie be fixed?
Joe: AKA who.
Greg: Should be in the.
Joe: Remake? So I have two different answers. And you either go full Hong Kong and you have John Woo and Chow Yun-fat and Jet Li.
Greg: Yeah. Oh, that’s a good idea.
Joe: And you remake it there? Sure. Or you go full American and you have James Cameron direct with Sliced Alone and Kurt Russell reprising their roles in Tango and Cash Flower for this. That was kind of where I went. How how do you remake this movie?
Greg: You’ve really got to go and cash of The Raid.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: That movie might be more universal than we thought. I don’t.
Joe: Think so. But.
Joe: Okay, if.
Greg: This movie was to be remade right now, we’ve got to get some middle aged people to star in it. I think there’s a chance that modern day John Travolta is Channing Tatum. Okay, Beefcake, he can dance.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: I think I like Channing Tatum more than I like John Travolta. He’s funnier, more talented.
Joe: Better looking, a better person.
Greg: I’m like, good to bump into John Travolta someday. He’s going to be the most wonderful person I’ve ever met in my life. Yeah, I’m gonna regret everything I said. I think that there is one person that could recast Nicolas Cage in every Nicolas Cage movie, and that person is Sam Rockwell.
Joe: Okay, yeah.
Greg: I think Sam Rockwell with Nicolas Cage, the s word out of every movie that Nicolas Cage has ever been in. And I don’t think this goes both ways. I don’t think Nicolas Cage could be Sam.
Joe: Rockwell in every movie now, because Sam Rockwell was like a legitimately great actor.
Greg: He has a couple more spices in his cabinet, you know? Yeah. So Sam Rockwell, Channing Tatum, they’re the stars of this movie, modern day Joan Allen, I think is probably Gwyneth Paltrow.
Greg: Okay. And honestly John Woo just remade the killer.
Greg: So I think I think John Woo comes back and if he isn’t available and I’m assuming that’s because they actually do let him make the third Top Gun movie the way he wanted to make the second Top Gun movie. I say we give it to Chad Stahelski.
Joe: Oh, I.
Greg: Mean, I think Chad Stahelski, you know, you were saying that he does have something that he’s doing after the John Wick movies. I think he should do a face off.
Joe: Okay.
Greg: But also, I had a second idea.
Joe: Okay.
Greg: And honestly, I like this one more. We recast with Lupita Nyong’o.
Greg: Of Black Panther. This three five, five, which has a very special place in my heart. And Naomi Harris Naomi Harris was Moneypenny in the new James Bond movies. She’s been in a million things. So I’m just going to say she was awesome in Michael Mann’s Miami Vice.
Joe: Okay? Nobody’s going to fact check that.
Greg: If I have to pick one, I’m going to pick that one. So those two are the stars, and that’s way more talent than we need to make this movie. I also think we should do kind of like a mash up where this is a reboot of another franchise at the same time. So we’re taking face off, we’re taking the face off, a face off and applying it to a different movie as well.
Greg: Okay, to reboot another series then this reboot is called Thelma Versus Louise.
Greg: I don’t know if you remember Thelma and Louise, but Brad Pitt there was like his big breakout role. And I say Brad Pitt returns okay. Maintains his role from the original.
Joe: Okay.
Greg: So he’s kind of taking over the Joan Allen part from Face Off. And actually, those three actors are so expensive that Brad Pitt actually has to take the part of everyone else in the movie as well.
Joe: We can only.
Greg: Afford the.
Joe: Three.
Greg: So it’s not just the three of them. I think because Ridley Scott made Thelma and Louise and John Woo made Face Off, and both of them are still working at the top of their craft. I say we do a co-direct scenario, much like David Leitch and Chad Stahelski for John Wick. John Woo and Ridley Scott team up to make Thelma Versus Louise.
Joe: That’s awesome. I’m imagining Thelma versus Louise, but then like Face Off, like the movies, it’s awesome. That’s perfect. No doubt.
Greg: No. All right Joe, very important question. What album is 1997 Face off?
Joe: I really struggled with this. I went back and forth. I have a couple different and I’ll kind of walk you through my thought process on it.
Greg: Okay.
Joe: In a sense, it’s a movie that takes us out very seriously. But also can be played for comedic effect kind of accidentally. Okay. And so my first thought was it could be This is Spinal Tap’s first album. It’s like they’re kind of like a a fake band, but they take themselves very seriously within the movie and they actually make like legitimately kind of good music within the genre that they’re in.
Joe: Yeah. At the same time, they’re not kind of in on the joke or they are. The other thought that I had was, this is kind of like a supergroup of its time. You know, Nicolas Cage, John Travolta, John Woo. So this is Velvet Revolver, his first album, contraband. So those are the two albums that I came up with.
Joe: I’ve kind of like different thoughts I’ve had around it, but those are mine. What what album is this for you?
Greg: Well, let me ask you a question first as I’m putting songs on our Spotify playlist. Great bad movies, music that everyone can listen to. Should I just be both?
Joe: I think so you.
Greg: Have to this week.
Joe: I think that’s two to this week. Yeah.
Greg: Okay. So send me what songs you want it to be for. Okay. Those two albums, I approached this from someone who took on a different persona as if they did a face swap. Obviously everybody’s thinking about Garth Brooks right now and Chris Gaines, that’s not what I did, because this is a really, really that’s actually kind of an amazing album, the Chris Gaines album.
Greg: People don’t recognize the genius behind that, but I’m going to say that this is the fifth album by David Bowie that came out in 1972, and he did it as the story of an alter ego named Ziggy Stardust and David Bowie wasn’t super famous at the time. His fifth album. This album, which is widely regarded, I think, his best.
Greg: I think that’s kind of just the general consensus, because he wasn’t super famous at the time. People knew him as Ziggy Stardust, so it kind of worked. You know, he was Castor Troy, but he was passing as Sean Archer.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: So I’m going to say that this is Ziggy Stardust and the story in that album that they came up with after they had recorded most of the songs, by the way. It was like a retroactively put on it. Ziggy Stardust is a fictional, androgynous and bisexual rock star who was sent to Earth as a savior before an impending apocalyptic disaster.
Greg: Tell me this doesn’t sound like a future John Moon movie. In the story, Ziggy wins the hearts of fans, but suffers a fall from grace after succumbing to his own ego.
Greg: That just sounds like Castor Troy to me.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: I also thought it was interesting that David Bowie, he was born David Jones and changed his name to David Bowie after watching a movie from 1960. That’s awesome. So he had done this a few times. Really? Yeah.
Joe: I looked at lots of concept albums for this as well. Yeah, yeah. And I couldn’t land on one that I liked. So yeah, I can totally see it though. That’s awesome.
Greg: So I’ll put Starman on our on our playlist on Spotify. All right, Joe, it’s time for us to rate this movie. Our scale is great. Bad movies, good bad movies. Okay. Bad movie, bad bad movie. Worst case scenario, awful bad movie. How do you rank face off?
Joe: I can’t even pretend this is a great bad movie. Yeah, I would love to like, talk about it. I was on the fence or don’t get. No. This is a great bad movie. This is our movie through and through. Yeah. It’s what this podcast was made to talk about.
Greg: So absolutely. You know, this is peak great badness.
Joe: Yeah. Peak great bad movie. This is yeah, this might be one of the favorite movies I’ve done or we’ve done. Yeah. So far. Yeah.
Greg: Oh that’s interesting. I will bring this moment up, in a couple months. Okay. When we talk about a different movie. Okay. Joe Skywalker.
Joe: Yes. We made it. We did it. We had the conversation that need to be had about Face Off. No one else should really talk about this movie, if I’m being honest.
Greg: So we gave you almost 30 years, everybody. And now that we’ve had this conversation, I don’t think it needs to be discussed anymore. I needed to.
Joe: Happen. Yeah. How dare you not talk about this anymore. So.
Greg: Well, now. Okay, so we’re shaming them for not talking about it when we just told them they can’t anymore.
Joe: Yeah, also. Okay. Great,
Joe: Oh, and you know.
Greg: We should also say, as always, spoilers for Face.
Joe: Off, spoilers for Face Off. Yeah.
Greg: Now, listen, we love making this show. We love talking about movies like this. If you love hearing podcasts about this, we would love for you to support our podcast. Now there are a couple ways you can do that. One is simple tell your friends and listen to this podcast. They make drinking games for the movies that we like to watch and friends everywhere can have a great time.
Greg: Another way is you can rate and review this podcast on whatever podcast, you know, app. You’re listening to it too. And if you aren’t listening to this on a podcast app, you’re listening to it on our website, great bad movies or someplace else. Find it on one of your podcast apps and subscribe. There. Oh my gosh, Joe, this has been great, but, I need to go.
Greg: I’m late for a handful of. I’m sorry to say this, but a handful of funerals. Let’s see, there was Anderson, Montgomery, Berkeley. We’ll go with Pincus. Lee and I don’t know, we’ll just say winter, so I better go.
Joe: Yeah. Awesome. That’s that’s good. I’ve got to go bring this out of my mortal enemy home. No, I didn’t tell anyone. Obviously. Also, when I get home, I’m going to make them stand outside and wait till I said my hellos. And Mandy can come in as a surprise. It should be fun.
Greg: Really a brave move, by the way. And John Allen just goes, okay. Yeah. And that’s the end of the movie.
Greg: That really could have broken bad. Yeah. Has that ever happened to you, by the way?
Joe: Not yet.
Greg: But do you ever bring anybody home? Okay, okay. Yeah, well, that works for me because I have accidentally invested too much money in quiet fabrics this whole time. And I realize now there’s a future. And the opposite, something I like to call loud fabric. So I better go.
Joe: That’s, That’s good, that’s good. I’m going to go set a bomb and LA. Yeah, sounds cool, I know, but instead of a normal amount of time, like 3 or 5 hours, I’m going to set it for at least a week. You know, it’ll build more tension that way.
Greg: Sir. And I would avoid LA in about a week. It’s going to get smoggy.
Joe: As he.
Greg: Says in the movie. Well, that works for me because, Joe, you know, sometimes great art inspires you.
Greg: Well, I would like to announce that I am going to go back to school after watching Face Off to study bio covers so I can run my own bio cover unit someday, like Doctor Malcolm Walsh in that documentary we just watched Face Off.
Joe: That’s good. That’s that’s interesting because I’m, you know, I’m getting a face transplant later today. It seems important to tell you that you don’t need the same blood type as the person that you’re getting the transplant from. But just as a reminder, it’s just an important piece of information that nobody really needs to know about. But just to know, you don’t need to have the same blood type as anyone else.
Greg: It is weird and totally tertiary that you just mention that, and I’m sure it will never come up. Yeah, okay. Well, while you’re doing that, I don’t know how to say this, but I am so tired of only ominous people around me having boom shoes.
Joe: Are you tired of this? I am, that sounds terrible.
Greg: So I am actually headed out the door right now to go announce my newest brand. I’m calling them boom is there boom shoes for the rest of us?
Joe: Oh, that’s perfect, because.
Greg: I better go.
Joe: Yeah, because I’m going to need those. Because I’m going to be walking in slow motion while doves fly out of my way. So.
Greg: Well, that works for me, because I’m going to go work at a nonprofit that helps kids stay away from eye makeup, which is clearly something that has the power to get you kicked out of school and robs you of a successful future. So you better go.
Joe: Yeah, that’s true. That’s very true. And, you know, I mentioned this face transplant I’m having at the exact same time that they’re removing my face. They’ll also be giving me a haircut. I think that should be fine.
Greg: That’s no big deal. No big deal. Okay. I’ve never had someone do like that face touching thing to me. So I need to go confront everybody in my family and ask them why they don’t love me.
Joe: Yeah, I think that’s good. I’ve got to go dive out of a door while shooting, while unfocused sparks are flying all around me. So should we go? We’ve all been there.
Greg: All right, well, that works for me, so I will.
Joe: See you soon. All right. See you soon.