Film Review: The Changing Face
When it comes to John Woo's "Hero Series", few people would prefer "The Changing Face". In terms of heroism, it is not as good as "The Hero"; in terms of romance, it is not as good as "The Four Seas"; in terms of classical chivalry, it is not as good as "The Two Bloods"; and in terms of epic style, it is not as good as "Streets of Blood". However, after a closer look at the film, I decided to place it in the top three of John Woo's films. It is the perfect Hollywood demonstration of Wu's "violent aesthetic", a police chase that renders love and revenge, successfully grafting the Western concept of family onto the gunfire to redeem the sanctity of family. In this film, when revenge becomes redemption, when Sean holds Adam in his arms through the rain of bullets, humanity overcomes hatred, warmth melts the coldness, and fatherly love banishes the bullets.
I. When one becomes one's own enemy
Like a windy jungle, The Changing Face is a story of revenge. It begins in a strong black-and-white dichotomy, with the heartwarming scenes of FBI detective Sean and his only son Mike playing in an amusement park on one side, and the cold eyes of terrorist Cass Troy with a gun in the woods on the hillside on the other. On the other hand, there is the cold look in the eyes of terrorist Cass Troy with a gun in the woods on the hillside. Cas was going to kill Sean but ended up killing Mike by mistake. Sean is devastated and vows to bring his son's killer to justice, and the two men are left with a deep-seated grudge.
The pain of losing his son is so intense that Sean works like a machine that never gets tired, and revenge is the only way to clear the gloom and bring back the sun. By chance, he learns about Cass from an informant and after a fierce battle, he captures the badly wounded Cass and his brother Poe's gang. With his son avenged and his people eliminated, Sean thought he could return to a life of peace and relaxation. But then, in a sudden turn of events, Cass is in a coma after his arrest, which means that the devil cannot be brought to justice and his son's murder cannot be avenged. To make matters worse, the trial stalled when Ball told the police that Cass had planted a powerful gas bomb in a public place where a crowd had gathered before his arrest, and that he would rather die than confess to the location. To avert disaster, the FBI makes a dangerous move: using advanced medical technology to "fit" Sean with Cass's face, and then using voice disguise, Sean disguises himself as Cass to get the secret location of the gas bombs from Ball at the prison.
The "face" project is highly classified and Sean is transformed overnight into Cass, a vicious terrorist and murderer of his son, and imprisoned as the most dangerous criminal of all. At first, the plan goes exactly as the police envisage, with Sean cleverly coaxing Poe into telling him that the gas bomb is hidden at the New York Convention Centre. However, things take a turn for the worse when a comatose Cass miraculously awakens and coerces a doctor to "install" Sean's face on his own, then kills all those who know about the "face-change" project. Cass becomes an FBI agent, assumes Sean's identity as police chief, and comes to Sean's house to take over his life. Sean is unable to confirm his identity and is held in prison forever as Cass.
How can the true nature of Sean and Cass be revealed? Will Sean be able to capture Cass again and succeed in his revenge? What will Cass do with Sean's identity and power? The complexities and ambiguities of the characters' relationships are tangled in a cloud of suspicion, and the plot is a tumultuous one. Sean and Cass use their "false identities" to carry out their respective operations. Sean manages to escape from prison and hangs out with Cass's old friends to try to recover the truth, while Cass enters the police station to defuse the bomb he planted at the New York Convention Center in a "show", gaining presidential He is a popular figure in the police force. After a fight to the death, Sean sneaks up on his wife Eve and tells her the truth. The truth comes out in the form of a blood test. As good is rewarded with good, evil is rewarded with evil, and Sean asks Cas to finish the job in a quiet, solemn cathedral, killing Cas to regain his identity.
II. Family redemption
For Chinese audiences, the concept of face-changing is an extremely familiar one, with many martial arts novels featuring the use of human skin masks in disguise. For Westerners, the idea of a terrorist becoming a federal police detective and taking over the latter's career and life is simply unthinkable. John Woo understands the appeal of "face-changing" to Americans, and goes all out to create an enchanted feeling of "you in me, me in you", while not stopping at face-changing, but going deeper into the life crises faced by American families with "The police catching the thief" is a self-redemption for the family.
The death of his son has left Sean's family in a state of mental gloom, his adolescent daughter has begun to turn bad, the relationship between husband and wife is no longer harmonious, and there is a hidden crisis of division everywhere. The family's love for each other is a constant source of support for the imperfect family. Sean will run his hand over his wife's face and tuck his disobedient daughter in at night. Undoubtedly, Sean loved his family dearly, only he was bound by hatred and determined to hunt down Cas to avenge his son. After changing his face, he met Cas' mistress as Cas, and when he met Cas' son Adam, who was his son's age, his hatred turned into fatherly love and nostalgia, so much so that he protected his enemy's son in a hail of bullets. When Sean is unable to regain his identity, he realises that only his wife can help him. At home, there is only pain and sorrow in his eyes when he faces his wife who does not believe in his identity. After some effort, justice is served and Sean rejoins his wife and daughter, with Adam in tow, saying to his wife, "He needs a home". His wife nods knowingly, his daughter takes Adam to see the new room, Adam fills the void left by Mike, and a whole family is re-established.
The "black and white forest" of friendship
The script is well crafted and solid, making Changing Faces a high point for John Woo in Hollywood, with positive word-of-mouth and box-office success. The "face-changing" design, which is the crux of the story, gives the same person's appearance two different hearts, or rather, the same mind two completely different faces, and the audience, along with Sean and Cass, is like walking into a maze of mirrors, unable to identify their way and losing themselves. It is not a true story, but a dramatic one, "a dark, clever and furious film", as Time magazine put it.
Rather than playing a simple game of "cat and mouse", the film devises a certain extreme state of human relationships and seeks to find a philosophical proposition in this state, namely the entanglement and transformation of good and evil. Woo doesn't just preach the triumph of good over evil, he really wants to celebrate the love of the world, even if it's the loyalty and friendship shown in a moment by an outlaw and a killer in the camp of evil.
"Brotherhood" is the word and relationship that John Woo is most fond of. "Brotherhood" is a kind of mutual understanding, a kind of heroic valuing, a kind of tacit understanding that needs no words, a kind of reckless trust, a spirit of risking one's life for the other. It is the warmth that flows from a look and a gesture.
The Changing Face amplifies the meaning of "brotherhood", continuing the black and white justice blurred by The Hero and The Bloodshed, where each man shines with the light of humanity and the pride of living and dying together. Cass's old friend Trudy is a man of steel, who, after being shot several times, presses his hand against his blood-spurting neck and says goodbye to his sister as if nothing has happened, falling into Sean's arms to see his brother one last time. Sacha, Cass's lover, is a drug dealer and terrorist, but she also has the love of a mother and gives her life for her beloved. This multi-faceted approach to characterisation breaks down the strict distinction between good and evil, allowing the flower of life to blossom in the midst of a battle to the death. It is the melancholy and sorrowful eyes of Sean, the lost and sad expression of Eve, the sweet and innocent smile of Adam, the dying words of Sacha, the beauty that cannot be hidden by the violence in the world.
Cass is a horrible monster who wants to turn New York into ashes, yet he ties his brother's shoelaces with care, and his brotherly love leaps off the screen in a few shots; he is cold and murderous, yet his eyes glisten with tears when his brother falls to his death from a height; he looks like a vicious demon, yet there is a glint of remorse in his eyes when he accidentally kills Sean's son. Theon and Cass have a deep-seated hatred, but when he faces Cass's lovely son, all that hatred dissipates, bringing warmth to the dark and violent vendetta.
IV. Writing with Ritualised Violence
From The Hero to The Changing Face, from Chow Yun Fat to John Travolta and Nicholas T. Kubrick. Travolta and Nicolas Cage, all of them are eye-catching. From Chow Yun Fat to John Travolta and Nicolas Cage, all of them are "modern gunmen" with sunglasses, black trench coats and double guns in their hands. Doves, churches, candlelight, Jesus, the Virgin Mary, golden Desert Eagles, bullets flying out of the sky with flames and other iconic props all make their "appearance". The entire screen becomes a stage for the "aesthetics of violence". If violence is a 'cultural sin' that cannot be eradicated from cinema, then John Woo redeems himself in his own way for a world that cannot be saved. All the bullets, all the blood, and all the deaths are not used to write an "ode to violence", but to let the violence whistle past in the solemn church, under the wings of the flying doves, in front of the suffering statue of Jesus, and in the whispered hymns, leaving behind the peace symbolised by the doves, the faith symbolised by the church, and the faith gathered in the blood. The blood of the men and the warmth of the family, the symbol of peace, the faith of the church and the blood of the men, is the ultimate in violence and sanctity.
After Sean escapes from prison, Cass and the police chase him to Trudy's place. In a room surrounded by mirrors, the two men confront each other with guns drawn and pointed at the same mirror, a replica of the confrontation between Chow Yun Fat and Lee Sau Yin in Bloodsport, one good and one evil, one good and one evil, one white and one black. The mirror forms a metaphor for the spiritual dimension, where the two men see only the surface of their disguises, not their true selves, and their true selves exist only within each other. Both sides pull the trigger, and the shattered lenses signify the complete denial of their outer disguises.
Woo builds several scenes of confrontation, creating a tense atmosphere in which life and death are at stake. In the Trinity residence and church, Sean and his wife, Cass and his mistress, Cass's brother, Adam, Trinity and others share the same room, each gun aimed at a different object, and any shot fired brings about a cascading effect and an uncertainty that cannot be determined. Similar scenes are memorable, such as the confrontation between the five men in Falling Dogs and the confrontation between the gangsters and the police at the end of Public Enemies, which Johnnie To also 'invokes' in a modified form in the home of a mob doctor in Exile.
Once again, Red Cliff proves that it is impossible for John Woo to go back to the past. At this point in time, when we look back at Wu's films, we see that in the works that followed The Changing Face, Wu has gradually slipped from being a master of constructing, enriching and developing a distinctive visual style to being a technician on a commercial assembly line. As a result, the film has an added sense of retrospection.
