The Most Pause-Worthy Moments In Face/Off

When "Face/Off" was released in 1997, audiences weren't entirely clear on what they were seeing. A review in The Washington Post described the film as "a delirious mixture of spectacular gun battles, furious explosions and breathtaking stunt work," while adding that "it's also one of the strangest stories to ever get the green light at a Hollywood studio." The premise is outlandish: To prevent an attack planned by terrorist Castor Troy (Nicolas Cage), FBI agent Sean Archer (John Travolta) goes undercover. This isn't your normal undercover job — through an advanced sci-fi surgery, Archer's face is removed and replaced with the captured Troy's. However, once Archer (with Troy's face) is on his mission, Troy gains control, forcing the surgeon to put Archer's face on his own naked skull. Consequently, Archer is living out in the world as Troy ... and Troy has taken over Archer's life, family and all.

Directed by John Woo, the film was an enormous success at the time, holding its own in a summer that also saw the release of "Men in Black," "The Fifth Element," and "The Lost World: Jurassic Park." "I have no problem with people saying it's crazy or it's insane or it's stupid," said co-screenwriter Mike Werb (via ShortList). "It's a fable." A blockbuster upon release, it has become a cult favorite and was prominently featured in Cage tribute "The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent." Love it or hate it, "Face/Off" and the wild ride it provides have stood the test of time.

Of course, one of the most iconic moments in "Face/Off" is when they take the faces ... off. (According to ShortList, the back-and-forth with the famous line "I'd like to take his face ... off" was ad-libbed by Nicolas Cage.) The facial surgery scene was the hinge upon which the film's premise turned. "I realized during the premiere during that [surgery] sequence that we had totally sold the idea," editor Steve Kemper told Inverse. "We knew right there and then that the audience was buying the idea."

Such a victory came from the hard work of the art and prosthetics crew working on the film. Special effects artist Kevin Yagher oversaw the creation of robotic doubles for both Cage and John Travolta. These doubles were painstakingly made, beginning with lifecasts and then outfitted with blood vessels that pumped and tiny motors that made it appear as if the bodies were breathing and moving. "It was so impeccably done that Travolta was kind of freaked out," art director Steve Arnold told Inverse. And Travolta wasn't alone — Cage found them just as disconcerting. "They made a clone of me, which is terrifying to look at. You could trip out on it," Cage said in a behind-the-scenes featurette for the film. "It breathes, and it twitches its face ... it's amazing."

When Nicolas Cage began shooting "Face/Off," he had just come off of two other action films: "The Rock" and "Con Air." He was primed and ready for action. According to "Face/Off" weapons master Rock Galotti, "Nic's extremely, extremely athletic" (via ShortList). With Woo and stunt coordinator Brian Smrz putting an emphasis on practical effects, Cage ended up playing a large role in many of the stunts. This included getting strung up in a harness for the wind tunnel scene at the beginning of the movie (via Inverse).

However, there was one stunt that Cage would not take part in — the jump that ends the prison break sequence. Having staged a prison riot, Archer (with Troy's face) manages to get outside of the high-security prison, only to realize that the prison is inside an oil rig-like structure that is far from shore. He's stranded. And if that's not enough, helicopters arrive and shoot at him. There's only one way to go: down. And for Cage, who is afraid of heights, that wasn't going to happen. "I like Nic, but he definitely did not like heights at all," Smrz told Inverse. "We did get him up there. He does a small little run and jump and that's about it." From there, the stunt was performed by a world-champion high diver named Bob Brown.

When Archer-with-Troy's-face is in the prison, Troy's brother is suspicious at Troy's lack of rage. And so Archer-with-Troy's-face needs to exhibit pure, evil rage. This is one of the points in "Face/Off" where Nicolas Cage taps into the frenetic style of acting that he's known for. Cage recalls getting very into the scene and that he "just kept going for it" (via Entertainment Weekly). Cage said he had seen director John Woo's other films and knew that frenzied violence fit the director's style.

Others agreed. Neil Spisak, the production designer, described Woo as a "very charming and very sweet man," that is, "for a man who blows the s*** out of everything" (via Inverse). Ellen Mirojnick, the film's costume designer, told Inverse that Woo "uses blood better than most directors. The amount of blood was massive." Woo indeed let Cage go all-out for the prison fight scene. Screenwriter Mike Werb said that Woo only pulled things back once: "John Woo was saying you can't hit Nic in the face too many times. It should be more in the stomach because the audience might be afraid his face is gonna fall of" (per Pajiba).

For Cage, it remains a surreal memory. "There was a moment in there where I think I actually left my body," he told Entertainment Weekly. "I got scared, am I acting or is this real? I can see it if I look at the movie, that one moment, it's in my eyes."

Sean Archer's friend and coworker in "Face/Off" is played by comedian Margaret Cho. Cho had met John Woo through action star Chow Yun-fat, and she was thrilled to be part of such a big film. "This is like '90s action filmmaking where they could actually explode a plane without CGI," she told Collider. "This is before so many of these things were created with CGI. We had none of that. We only had planes and explosives."

However, the best part of the production, in Cho's experience, was getting to hang out with John Travolta. "He was a really jovial guy, really fun," Cho remembered, adding that one time she had lunch with him, "He ate an entire 9-inch boysenberry pie with a fork. No plates, no knives" (via Collider). "Everything John Travolta eats has a flaky crust," Cho joked on The Jess Cagle Show, adding that their rich lunches of beef wellington and pie meant that costumers sewed some elastic into her costumes to make them more accommodating.

Despite being known, in part, for the violence of his films, John Woo is a devout Christian, and puts symbolism in his films to express his faith. Specifically, he uses doves to symbolize the connection between man and God, the soul, and more. "Doves represent the purity of love, beauty. They're spiritual," he said (via Theology Gaming). When discussing his earlier Hong Kong film "The Killer," Woo explained that the image of doves flying, combined with the images of the bad guy dying, represented the soul leaving the body: "These guys have done some bad things in their lives but their souls got saved in the end, which I wanted to express through this image," he said (per ScreenRant).

While Woo was a very established filmmaker in Hong Kong, "Face/Off" was only his third Hollywood film. This meant that some of his colleagues weren't familiar with his trademark birds. According to Inverse, producer Barrie Osborne originally denied Woo's request for pigeons. But after seeing Woo's disappointment, Osborne said he wasn't able to sleep that night. The following morning Osborne said he went back to Woo and said, "John, if you tell me you won't wait for the pigeons to do something perfect, you can have the pigeons." According to Osborne, Woo's "face lit up." And the rest is history.

The film ends with Archer reinstalling his own face and bringing home Troy's son, apparently to adopt as a sort of "replacement" for Archer's son, whom Troy kills at the beginning of the film. That ending very nearly did not make it into the finished film. Studio executives said the ending was "European" and that American audiences would not accept that Archer would take in Troy's kid (per Inverse). But then, Mike Werb said, "There was a test screening; the report came back that over 65% of the audience took the initiative to say, 'What happened to that little boy?'" With that, the studio agreed to film the originally planned ending.

On the Blu-ray release of "Face/Off," you can see another alternate ending that suggests that Castor Troy isn't totally gone — an evil grin from Archer's face seems to suggest the faces weren't returned to their rightful owners. "I think they were trying to imply that Sean Archer is possessed in some way by Castor Troy or his experience of being Castor Troy will forever haunt him in some supernatural way," said Simon Barrett (via Showbiz CheatSheet), though he made it clear he prefers the original ending. Barrett, screenwriter, along with director and co-writer Adam Wingard, signed on to create a sequel to the 1997 film in 2021 (via Deadline). But it'll be tough to top the action-packed madness of John Woo's original.