A terrorist, Castor Troy (Nicolas Cage) tries to kill the cop Sean Archer (John Travolta). But unfortunately he kills the son of the latter. Then Sean continues to pursue the murderer to avenge his son. Finally he achieves to arrest him and his bro. Nothing exceptional film banal action and revenge with a happy end. But the villain has hidden a huge bomb in LA. Sean must find it and that's why his boss proposes him to graft the face of Castor Troy, then to enter the prison and ask Troy's brother where is the chemical bomb. What was not anticipated was that Castor Troy managed to escape from the hospital, forces the doctor to graft him the face of Sean Archer and removed all evidences. Thus one takes the place of another. Troy sleeps with the wife of Archer, Archer is in prison, talks to Troy's friends dealers... It creates a lot of complicated situations. A real game of mirrors and a search for identity begin! Just for the really good storyline I wanted to give a 10/10 BUT...

The movie's goal is to entertain. That's why we can see car chases, shootings, deaths, blood, explosions (the list is long). The fight scenes are horribly exaggerated (noise, roll on the side, jump...). The director abuses of "slow motions", this is ridiculous. Some scenes between Troy and Archer are very interesting in the way they are filmed (shadows, mirrors, double face) but the editing suffers from serious problems of rhythm. John Travolta is better in the bad guy part and not very credible in the role of Inspector protector. The characters are stereotyped. The good cop who loves his family, who don't smoke against the villain who takes drugs, who is hysterical and depraved. Ahh american morality... Moreover, some roles are not enough developed or totally useless (the daughter of the cop and the friends of Troy for example).

To sum up (and if you don't want to read my review :p) Face/Off is interesting and very entertaining. But we must not dig deep and think too much in order to appreciate this movie!