What we have here is the first, true American John Woo movie. After watching Robert Rodriguez steal from him, Tarantino steal from him, and everyone else steal from him, he apparently decided, “DAMMIT! I’m going to steal from myself!” I am amazed by the shear volume of shots stolen from “The Killer” in this movie. There’s even a shootout in a church with doves flying about.
Here’s the story: Travolta is an FBI agent who’s been on Cage’s trail for years. Cage attempts to off him one day but only kills Travolta’s young son, instead. Now it’s PERSONAL! Fast forward to around 1999 and Travolta finally catches Cage and his brother in a bloody gun battle in a plane hanger. Cage ends up in a coma and his brother goes to prison. Then the
FBI find out Cage had placed a very large bomb of nerve gas somewhere in Los Angeles. Travolta gets talked into an insane plan of having his face removed and replaced with the dormant Cage’s. With only around four people
knowing of this plan, Travolta’s character (now played by Cage) enters the
prison to trick the brother into revealing the location. Can you figure out what happens now?
If you can’t, I’m still not going to spoil it for you. Let’s just say Cage and Travolta get to walk a few miles in each other’s shoes, making each
distinctly uncomfortable. OK, the premise may be a little hard to take, but there’s plenty of good writing here, anyway. If you want your action films to be completely plausible, well it’s going to be an all-around crappy year for you; but if you’ve been waiting for Hollywood to take the restraints off the finest action director in the world, then June 27th will be a day to celebrate.
