Face/Off.

Face/Off is a feast for the senses that often turns into an assault on the senses and that always asks us to disbelieve our senses. On one level, this is an action film in excelsis, a special effects extravaganza that, just when we think it's gone over the top, slaps us in the face with the fact that we don't know what that top can possibly be. Only the director, John Woo, knows, and on his way to it he will thrill, hammer, harrow us to his heart's content. Watching this movie, I felt I was seeing everything I hate in contemporary commercial film-making, yet I sat there enthralled. It was as if I had fallen into the hands of a sadist who had developed the most tender regard for me. "Oh," John Woo seemed to be purring, "I know you hate such things, but you haven't seen my explosions, my firefights, my brand of chopsocky, my chase scenes. I will make you love all of it." I had to shake my head while exiting the theater to get rid of the metallic buzz inside my skull that was threatening to turn into a world-class headache. But, yes, I loved what had put the headache there. If there is such a thing as gourmet junk food, Face/Off is its cinematic equivalent.

But it's also that rarity: a subversive commercial movie. When you see a conservative, main-line action film like Rambo or almost any Jean-Claude Van Damme picture (Woo directed one of them), you are given a set of visual signals you have to obey if the movie is to give you any pleasure at all. That glowering, square-jawed, muscle-bound hunk is the hero. Root for him. And that smirking, foppishly dressed fellow with the British accent and the intellectual demented gleam in his eyes is the villain. Fear and despise him. Obey the signals, turn your mind off, and your basic instincts will get a healthy work-out, these movies promise.

But Face/Off subverts such rules and you can't turn off your mind while watching it. Though its stars, Nicolas Cage and John Travolta, don't look alike, there is an emotional and physical affinity between them. Neither is (to say the least) a golden boy. Their asymmetrical, rather untrustworthy faces (Travolta the Weasel, Cage the Simian) can express tenderness, even nobility but are really more suited for conveying unease, deviousness, monomania, lechery, treachery, Schadenfreude. Both actors are fit to play either the imperfect hero or the perfectly loathsome villain. And in this movie there is no either/or. Both actors get to play both roles.

The story of Face/Off is Fu Manchu stuff. Having immobilized the terrorist Castor Troy (Cage), government agent Sean Archer (Travolta) submits to some sci-fi plastic surgery and assumes the face and voice of his enemy in order to trap Troy's confederates and defuse a hidden bomb. We have spent the first half-hour of Face/Off watching Travolta's face express fatherly tenderness and anguish (his son was killed by Troy), courage, loyalty, frustrated longing for his estranged wife, ravaged perseverance. And we have grown used to Cage's face as a mask of murderous exaltation. But after Travolta takes Cage's face, Cage soon escapes and steals Travolta's. Volteface with a vengeance! Time to disbelieve our senses. But, since we're not Pavlovian dogs, we soon adjust to the switch and again know whom to root for. Right?

Wrong. Because Woo isn't content to confuse our eyes, he wants to tease our moral values as well. When agent Archer finds himself locked up in the prison meant for Troy, with no one to believe he is really the good guy, he breaks out, killing some guards as he does so. How are we supposed to feel about those slaughtered guards? As necessary victims to ultimate justice? Hmmm. Later, Troy, still wearing the face of the hero, leads a government raid on a terrorist stronghold in order to kill Archer, who's taken refuge with his erstwhile enemies. To get the hero, the villain is willing to kill some of his old terrorist comrades. Well, naturally, the scumbag! But wait a minute. To protect himself and a woman and child who are part of the terrorist family (the bereaved Archer has bonded with the little boy), agent Archer participates in the killing of some of his old law-and-order comrades. And how are we supposed to feel about that?

There is stylistic subversion as well. As I've indicated, Woo bombards our senses with stunts and special effects. But in other action films, the relatively quiet moments carried by mere acting and dialogue are usually allowed to exist only for the sake of exposition or simply to give the viewer a rest between explosions. Not in this movie. In fact, long after seeing Face/Off, you may find yourself remembering not the chases and fights but the sneaky eroticism and bravura nastiness of the nonviolent scenes. For instance, having already slept with Archer's wife, the terrorist then struts into the bedroom of her teen-aged daughter. But not to worry, he only bums a cigarette. "Hey, I never knew you smoked," the girl remarks as her "father" leaves. He replies, "No? Well, Papa's got a whole new bag now." And Travolta undulates out of the room with a bit of the conviction he brought to the dance floor of Saturday Night Fever twenty years ago. No incest for now, but it's disturbingly in the offing.

There are also hints that the terrorist, Once ensconced in Archer's life, is able to please the people in it much more than Archer ever was. Archer, bent on avenging his son's death, neglected his wife; the terrorist woos her with flowers and candlelight dinners. Archer was a workaholic who drove his fellow agents crazy; Troy the terrorist radiates camaraderie and gratitude. (And why shouldn't he? Everyone's dropping top secrets in his lap.) Archer performed heroic deeds and quickly moved on to the next assignment, barking at anyone who tried to congratulate him. But when Troy defuses a bomb (strictly to further his nefarious schemes, of course), he receives praise gracefully and basks in the media limelight. Sure, Archer was an authentic hero, but Troy the terrorist knows how to play a hero. These days, which is more important?

Face/Off is a dazzling entertainment, and, with its cleverness, high energy, and good acting, it may convince some that it's also a work of art. Don't be fooled. Compare it to a thriller that was indeed a (minor) work of art, In the Line of Fire, and you can see the difference. In Face/Off, the exchange of roles between hero and villain is titillating, but the hero, before the exchange, is a stock figure of virtue (despite Travolta's likability) just as the villain is a caricature of evil genius (despite Cage's magnetism). In Line of Fire, Clint Eastwood gave us a convincing man even before the plot got under way, and, though John Malkovich made his villain a monster, he was a complex monster with surprising frailties and convincing grievances.

Also, consider the way the slaughter of innocent bystanders is treated in both movies. In Face/Off, hundreds of people get mowed down, but they're just so many bowling pins knocked over. But when the bank officer of In the Line of Fire - a sweet, lonely, somewhat overweight woman - realized that the man she was attracted to was trying to kill her, her nightmare became one of our nightmares because the script and actress had convinced us of her humanity before she became a victim. Her death was a component in the screenplay's machinery, but it felt tragically real. In Face/Off, everything exists for the sake of momentary thrills.

Some critics in film journals will be turning out unreadable articles for years to come about the profundity of Face/Off because its pop subversiveness pleases their fake-anarchist sensibilities. Basically, Face/Off is schlock. But it's high-octane schlock. Superduper schlock. John Woo is still what Steven Spielberg used to be: a little boy who can hypnotize adults.