Thoughts on only my second viewing of Face/Off

I went into Friday night, the second night of a three-day weekend, knowing I was going to watch something I'd seen only once before, but not knowing what it would be.

I figured to make this determination by browsing a streaming service at random, and then a second if the first didn't yield any results that I was feeling on this particular occasion. As it turned out, I made my ultimate determination because the movie in question was playing on the free-to-air channel that came on when I turned on the TV.

This was earlier in the evening, when the family and I were going to watch something different during our dinner. So I didn't sit and watch it right there. I did, however, decide it was finally time to revisit John Woo's Face/Off, which I'd seen only once, and it was available for streaming on Disney+.

The fact that I have not revisited this film in the 26 years since it was released is a strange one. I always think of it as Woo's best film, and in 1997, it finished as my #3 film of the year. Number three! 

To give you some idea how odd it is that I haven't reconsidered it since then, I have rewatched every other film in my top 15 of 1997 at least once. That includes, in the following order, Titanic, Contact, Starship Troopers, Waiting for Guffman, Liar Liar, Donnie Brasco, Boogie Nights, Private Parts, U-Turn, L.A. Confidential, Hercules, Men in Black and Breakdown. (The order of these films' significance to me may have changed since then, but I still like all these films quite a lot.) Only at #16 do you get the second best movie of 1997 that I'd never rewatched, which is Neil Labute's In the Company of Men.

So why the hesitation on rewatching such a fun popcorn movie with such a high likelihood of playing similarly for me on a second viewing?

Well I'll start by saying I don't think I've avoided a second viewing. Repeat viewings tend to have an element of randomness to them, dependant more on mood and availability than as a correlation to your feelings about the film. 

If there's a subconscious part of me that's avoided the second viewing, however, it could be for the reasons stated here. Yes, that post was called "One-timers I worry won't hold up," and it included the top ten films I'd seen only once on Flickchart that I was concerned might not survive the scrutiny of a second viewing.

With Woo in particular, it's because the signature elements of his filmmaking -- doves, absurd double-fisted gunplay -- became so ripe for parody so soon after Face/Off that I worried they would curdle my appreciation of that film.

And that's exactly how Face/Off started for me. There's an opening shootout that is just as dumb as dumb can get in these movies, which inclined me to cast aspersions over a whole era of action filmmaking. Yes, it's certainly "cool" to watch someone shoot with a gun in each hand, but has there ever been a less realistic form of combat? I'm sure there are skilled shootists out there who could withstand the recoil of the shot and keep their aim enough to potentially hit a target, but it wouldn't be a very efficient way to face your enemies -- better to just get a really good shot with one gun, and then another really good shot a half-second later. Add to that the fact that in these movies -- it was by no means limited to Face/Off -- the person toting the guns is also leaping out sideways while shooting at their opponent, and sometimes engaging in superfluous forward rolls that look kind of like they are tripping themselves to land on their own back before bouncing up again. It's hard to imagine the strategic justification for such moves.

I even went so far as to tell my wife, when she entered the room, that this movie was "terrible." (We had discussed earlier that we both really liked it in 1997.)

But after the opening scene ended, Face/Off started to remind me why I enjoyed it so much. And it occurred to me that though the action was certainly the thing that was sold to us at the time, Woo being an apparent expert in that arena, it's everything other than the action that I like so much about this movie.

The existential anxiety both characters experience, wearing the face of their enemy, is pretty good, considering that the story was probably first and foremost considered an armature on which to hang the explosions and gunplay. But what really surprised me was how invested I become in the journey of John Travolta's Sean Archer, who of course presents to us for most of the movie as Nicolas Cage. The climax -- first when he is addressed as Archer by the agents arriving on the scene, a triumphant proof that his face-swapping story has been believed, and then when he brings home Castor Troy's child to live with him after both of his parents were killed in the film's final set piece -- really got to me, such that I felt an actual lump in my throat.

I don't even necessarily think this was my reaction in 1997. I think I probably just thought "Wow, a guy holding two guns!" I mean, I did always think the absurd face-swapping story was a stroke of gonzo genius, but I'm not sure I appreciated all the nuances at that time, or the fact that the film genuinely tries to imagine what it would be like for these two men and the people who love them. 

I don't want to go through and pick out all the individual details -- actors I noticed that I might not have known at the time, funny lines of dialogue, etc. -- but there was one thing I wanted to call attention to because it relates to the recent news. And it does happen to involve an actor I wouldn't have known at the time.

There's a scene where Sean's daughter Jamie (Dominique Swain) is brought home by her date, and before she gets out of the car he begins forcing himself on her. Like not just flirtatious touches he hopes will go somewhere more, but actual grabbing and fondling and trying to penetrate orifices with digits. Castor, in the body of Sean, may not care inherently about the safety or purity of Jamie -- rather, he's probably more likely to consider it an infringement on his property. So he kicks the guy's ass all over the driveway.

That guy is played by Danny Masterson.

That's right, the former That 70's Show star who was just sentenced to 30 years to life after being convicted of rape. Talk about life imitating art. (We weren't actually talking about it -- I hate how people use the phrase "talk about" when they aren't actually talking about something.)

I always thought that guy was a prick, and apparently the Face/Off casting director could see it coming off him in waves as long as a quarter century ago.

One-timers I worry won't hold up

The movie Juno came up for discussion on Filmspotting in a recent episode -- an episode I was listening to on my way in to work on Wednesday -- where they were talking about great father-daughter pairings at the movies. (I'm actually wondering about the wisdom of mentioning Juno in this context nowadays, considering that Elliot Page was clearly playing a daughter in that movie, but identifies as a man now.)

They played a clip that reminded me how much I liked that movie, having named it my #3 movie of 2007. And also how the writing was specifically one of the things I liked about it, something it's easy to forget since we all turned on Diablo Cody rather quickly.

But I haven't gone back to watch Juno again, in part because I'm worried that when Rainn Wilson calls Page "home skillet," it'll seem pretty cringey. Is that reason enough not to rewatch a movie that once made my top three for a year? Almost certainly not.

So I decided to go through my Flickchart and identify other favorite movies I've seen only once to see if fears like this are holding me back there as well. For the purposes of this exercise, a "one-timer" is just as simple as it sounds: a movie I've seen only once. I'm clarifying because sometimes we use that term to describe a movie we can bear to see only once because it's so confronting or triggering, even though it may be excellent.

I'll do ten, and I'll list them in order of where they appear on my Flickchart, with the number serving as the number this movie is ranked out of 6182 films. And just to make the project slightly easier, I won't exclude Juno from the group.

173. Rushmore (1998, Wes Anderson) - This remains one of the movies it's weirdest that I've never rewatched. It took what I thought I had discovered with Wes Anderson in Bottle Rocket and absolutely crystallized it. I still think of it as one of my top few Anderson movies. However, I've also turned on Anderson enough over the years -- specifically his last film, The French Dispatch -- that I'm worried some of his later fussy quirks might spoil my so-far pristine feelings about Rushmore, since I'll be confronted with the fact that they were there all along. There's still no excuse for not watching this again, though, so I probably will. I should be further encouraged by the fact that a recent rewatch of The Royal Tenenbaums actually turned me from a Tenenbaums hater (or disliker, at least) to a Tenenbaums lover.

353. Good Night, and Good Luck. (2005, George Clooney) - This ranked even higher than Juno, ending its year as my #2 movie, behind only Hustle & Flow. I'm not so much worried that this has aged poorly as that my affection for it was inflated to begin with. The fact that it feels like a chore to potentially watch it again is a good indication of how my thoughts may have changed on it -- though it's not like I'm always stumbling across it on streaming and choosing not to watch it. 

372. Face/Off (1997, John Woo) - This is another case, as with Rushmore, of later-developed feelings about a director likely ruining a film for which I had uncomplicated affection the first time around. When I think of John Woo today, I think "That's that hack who puts doves into scenes of slow-motion gunplay, no matter how ridiculous." Yes, there are incongruous doves in the climax of the Ben Affleck vehicle Paycheck -- even though that scene takes place underground. 

378. Oldboy (2003, Park Chan-wook) - I think I really like Oldboy -- at least I'm ranking it that way on Flickchart -- but am I sure? I am not sure. I think I may have constructed a narrative here. I do remember that when I was watching it a friend's house, we were into it, but we did find some things confusing. I also remember that another friend was in the room but was not reading the subtitles, and then complained that he didn't know what was going on -- which is sort of hilarious, because obviously. I worry that if I watch this again, the fact that Park has been more hit than miss for me in the past ten years -- The Handmaiden being the exception -- will make me realize we were right to be confused about the poor storytelling the first time.

381. Juno (2007, Jason Reitman) - Home skillet. As discussed. 

422. Mr. Nobody (2009, Jaco van Dormeal) - The extremity of my positive reaction to this the first time around -- I gave it five stars on Letterboxd -- is more why I'm including it here than me secretly thinking it might not be good, and avoiding it for that reason. I'm actually not avoiding this movie per se, and have a couple times considered watching it again. But I think it slips in and out of availability on streaming, and the fact that I'm not willing to pony up to rent a movie I gave five stars suggests I think there was some excess positivity in my response. 

434. A Beautiful Mind (2001, Ron Howard) - I ranked this movie in my top ten of 2001 and remember being genuinely moved by its climax. I'm now more ashamed of the type of movie it is, and having this reaction to a movie that seemed so pointed at Oscar glory, than I am doubting that I'd tear up again at the end of a second watch. A Beautiful Mind is not in the same category of regrettable Oscar winner as Crash or Green Book, but it's not something people regularly talk about today, and there's probably a reason for that. 

485. Erin Brockovich (2000, Steven Soderbergh) - Erin Brockovich was, until recently, my highest ranked Soderbergh film -- but you also know from this post that I don't tend to rewatch any Soderbergh. Out of Sight has now gone ahead of it, Traffic is just behind it, and I've also now rewatched both Side Effects and Full Frontal, the former confirming my affection for it, the latter dropping it significantly in my estimation. When I first discovered that Brockovich was my highest ranked Soderbergh, I instantly doubted it, because (like A Beautiful Mind) of the type of film it is -- a legal drama about an unlikely crusader. Does not seem as worthy as his other output, and I haven't checked again to confirm whether it actually is. 

494. Argo (2012, Ben Affleck) - Another questionable best picture winner that made my top ten in the year of its release. I assume I would still actually like Argo, but it feels like a strange best picture winner in retrospect -- not a film anyone hates, but a film we all kind of forgot won. If you were recounting the best picture winners from the 2010's, this is the one you would forget. (You wouldn't forget Green Book, even though it's a worse movie, just because of how mad it made you when it won. Argo didn't make anybody mad. In fact, I'm not sure it inspired great love or great hatred in anybody.)

503. Away We Go (2009, Sam Mendes) - A friend of mine was the one who gave me doubts about this one. I really embraced this movie, again ranking it in my top ten for the year, but a friend had a wildly different reaction to it at the time, as I wrote about here. Apparently I have secretly wondered since then if he was always right. 

That's ten.

And yet an argument can be made that if I am ranking a movie in my top 500 on Flickchart -- Away We Go is the only one of these that (narrowly) misses that cutoff -- it's something I do really like. Or at worst, I should watch it again to ensure it deserves its lofty ranking. If it doesn't, I should begin busting it down to where it really belongs in my rankings. (A fate that befell the aforementioned Full Frontal, among other that spring to mind, such as Igby Goes Down.)

Given then I've already identified ten and it would be easy enough to come up with two more, it might make for a good monthly series one of these years -- except that I've already done something like this with what was then a weekly series in 2010, conducted over a couple months, called Double Jeopardy. At that time I subjected such films as Disney's The Kid, Click, U-Turn, Alpha Dog and Bedazzled to a new viewing to confirm my previous affection. But in none of those cases were the films ranked as highly as these are. (However, the series also helped boost two others into this rarefied air, as it made me realize my love for The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou and The Story of Us were intense enough to call them legitimate personal favorites.)

For now it's useful just to have identified this list. That way, if I have a random night where I can't figure out what to watch, and one of these titles appears before me on Netflix or Amazon, I'll remember I have this unfinished business.