<em>Face/Off</em> Is 20 Years Old
It’s bold. It’s absurd. It’s about, literally, the swapping of face-skin. It might be one of the best action movies of all time.
We ask a lot of action movies these days. Explosions, first of all—those are non-negotiable. Balletically choreographed fight scenes, definitely. Winking jokes, a general sense of whimsy, unapologetic violence—almost always. But that’s not enough, anymore. Today’s audiences, being a sophisticated and jaded sort, expect ambitious approaches to action as a genre and, really, as an ideology: We want action that is also . Narratives with literary nuance. Heroes who double—maybe! ambiguously!—as anti-heroes. Villains who are evil but also so very complicated in their villainy. Plots that, like cinematic parfaits, are intentionally layered, and that
