So once we kidnap super cop, then what?
Tiny surgery.
I'd like to take his. His face off.
Yes. If you
excuse me, I have to use the little boys
wee wee room.
Cass, you want
to take his face? Yes,
his face. Awful. The eyes,
nose, skin coming off.
The face.
No more drugs for that man.
It's two Dads one Movie. It's the podcast where two middle aged dads
sit around and shoot the shit about the movies of the 80s and 90s.
Here are your hosts, Steve Paulo and Nic Briana Hello,
everybody. It's another episode of 2 Dads 1 Movie. I'm Steve. And I'm Nick.
And today we are talking to you about the movie Face Off.
And I didn't even preface this. I just want to say Face off because I
have been looking forward to doing this movie honestly, since before we started the podcast.
Because I think we talked about it a few weeks ago. Cagevember is one of
the first things I thought up when I was like, I want to do a
podcast about movies and movies from the 80s and 90s. I want to do Cagevember.
I want to do. I didn't know it was going to be November at the
time, but I want to do a Nicholas Cage thing. Yeah. And most of the
reason I wanted to do a Nicholas Cage thing was so that I had another
excuse to rewatch Face off and talk about it. And so here we are.
John Woo, John Travolta, Nicholas Cage, Face Off. I am so excited to be a
part of this, Steve. Yeah. This one, I think hit us both around the
same time. So I am psyched about it. You picked this one.
Why? Why'd you pick this? I think you probably have myriad reasons
why you did. Why wouldn't you pick it is first off. But, you know,
just looking at the whole cagevember idea and Nicolas Cage stuff, this was like such
a classic coming together of so many elements of Nicolas Cage's career
in the mid to late 90s. It is a bonkers premise in a big budget
action movie from a superstar director where he's paired alongside another
great character, another great actor.
And, you know, so just like in the Rock when it was Michael Bay and
Sean Connery, and just like in Con Air when it was John Cusack and Simon
west, like, this is great stuff and it's really just insane.
It's like Cage level insane. Yeah. Which is great.
So, but before we get to it, I want to tie all these movies together
and I think it's important I written up a little bit of a timeline of
like, how do we get the movie Face Off? Beautiful? Because it's not an easy
thing to get a movie with this bonkers level of premise, with this size budget
done in this way. So how did we get Face Off? It's all because of
Sam Raimi, Quentin Tarantino, and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts
and Sciences. And why? I'll tell you why. In 1993, John Woo is hired
by Universal to direct his first English language film. Wu, of course,
was super, super, super successful in Hong Kong. Hard Boiled
the Killer, Better Tomorrow, like these great movies.
And so Universal Studios wants to bring him over to the US and do an
English language action film. So he looks at a bunch of scripts and he passes
on a bunch of martial arts films. He's like, I don't want to do just
a straight martial arts film. I've been doing those for a little while. He looks
at this, like, sci fi script that is a face swapping
story. It's set far in the future. It's much more science fiction. He's like,
I don't really want to do sci fi. That's not really my jam either.
He settles on the script for Hard Target. And so Jean Claude Van Damme acts
in, you know, stars in John Woo's first English language film in Hard Target.
Calling it English language might be a stretch because it was Van Damme, but going
into this, Universal is super nervous about, like, they invited him over, but it's also
like, new director Hollywood. Will he get along with Van Damme, who was an
enormous star at the time? Right, yeah. And so they assigned
Sam Raimi, the director, director, to go, like, kind of watch over the production
of Hard Target and, you know, keep an eye on Wu, help him out
if he needs it, you know, let us know if it's going really bad and
we'll set you, we'll put you in place instead. Okay. What they didn't know is
that Raimi already believed that the Killer was the greatest action movie ever
made. So he's already a huge John Woo fan. He is quoted as saying,
John Woo at 70% is still going to blow away most American action directors at
100%. So Sam Raimi didn't do a damn thing. He let John Woo be John
Woo. He let John cook. Very nice. And then Wu is hailed as a visionary.
Critics don't care for Hard Target, but action fans recognize it as a massive success
and wu's breaking into the American English language film
world. Okay, so that was 93 in 94, Quentin Tarantino does a little Movie
called Pulp Fiction, which resurrects John Travolta's career. Right. At that point,
Travolta had done recently. Done what? Like look who's talking, right. And a couple of
really various sequels. He wasn't. Yeah, he wasn't. He wasn't doing a listing much at
that time, but. But he is. His career is resurrect. Resurrected by that. In 1995,
Nicholas Cage breaks out of the career slump that he was in since he was
in Moonstruck and our last film, Raising our zone in 87 by turning in an
Oscar winning performance in Leaving Las Vegas. Of course he wins that Oscar in
1996. Right. That's when that Oscar ceremony occurs. So the Academy
fets Nicholas Cage with the best acting Oscar for Leaving Las Vegas in
96. Travolta gets into the action game. He's like, I want to be an actor.
Pulp Fiction was a crime. There's some action stuff. I want to get into this.
John Woo is looking to do his second English language film,
Broken Arrow. So Travolta
joins up with Wu for the first time alongside Christian Slater in Broken Arrow,
a fun movie. That same year, Cage also joins the action game.
It's his first action movie when he stars in the Rock alongside Sean Connery.
So we now have 1986 has occurred and both these men are really in their
first action movies, like for real. Wow. Then in 97,
Cage and Travolta come together as the action star duo that John
Woo needs to go back and get that sci fi face swapping script
and bring it to the modern day and make it a current day thing because
that's what his concept requires. And he can do this only with Cage and
Travolta, the two kind of most psychotic action movies of the action stars at the
time. The original concept for Face off was very sci fi set in the future.
Wu passed on it back then chose to do Hard Target, but they decided
that trio made it work in the modern day setting. But that's it. That's how
going back to Universal, inviting Wu over and him
doing Hard Target with Jean Claude Van Damme and Sam Raimi not being the watchdog
Universal thought they wanted. Really set all this up to get to where
we are, to where we get a movie like Face Off. God, that butterfly effect
is magical sometimes, huh? It is a lot of fun. Sometimes it's a butterfly spreading
its wings, sometimes it's Van Damme doing the splits. Yeah, exactly, Right. So,
yeah, so I, and I, you know, like you said, you Kind of hinted at
it before. Like this again, like, Con Air. This was, you know, the summer between
our junior and senior year of high school. This was prime time to, like,
watch this kind of movie. And this was definitely a theater watch for me.
What about you? Theater watch for sure. And this
also is a movie that Occupied Space is my favorite
movie of all time. For a while. When I first saw this,
I was blown away by it. And this. You know, there's other
things that we've already talked about that I had seen around this time.
But to me, I think this was just so above and beyond because I did,
like, the little tinge of sci fi element to it and the
action stuff. I hadn't seen the other John Woo films before I saw this,
so this was my first exposure to, you know, the way to shoot someone
is to dive sideways with two guns in slow motion while a bunch of seagulls
are flying in your face. Right? So, like, it was, to me, it was the
coolest shit I'd ever seen at the time. And this movie has some bonkers and
really great, really innovative action sequences. And it's just kind of like
boom, boom, boom. I mean, it's a long movie for the type of movie that
it is, but there's not a ton that that drags too much that really weighs
it down. So at the time, this was perfect for us. Like, for me being
16, 17, not going to have a girlfriend for another nine years,
probably, like, this was right where I wanted to be. Absolutely. All right,
man, let's jump into the facts on Face off, get through this preamble and get
into the movie. All right, the movie Face off came out on June 27,
1997. That is 21 days, three Fridays after con Air came
out. It has an R rating and a running time of 139 minutes.
The movie was directed by John Woo and written by Mike Werb and Michael
Collier Colliery. Starring Nicholas Cage, John Travolta, and the
beautiful Joan Allen. Scores. Rotten tomatoes. 93% of rotten
tomatoes. Massively fresh score on IMDb. A very respectable
7.3. And we get two thumbs up from our homies, Siskel and Ebert.
Good job, boys. Awards. This actually won several awards at
the 1998 Blockbuster Entertainment Awards, Cage won
favorite actor in an action adventure movie, beating out Travolta.
Of course, that's also the year. This is the 98 blockbuster entertainment awards,
also the year that Cage won favorite actor, period, for his
role in Con Air. So he was kind of up against. Somebody's cleaning up
Left and right. At the 1998 MTV Movie Awards, Cage and Travolta won best
on screen Duo. And the speedboat chase from near the end of this
movie. One best action sequence at that awards show as well. On an $80 million
budget, it took home $245 million in the box office
for just over three times what it cost, which is a hit movie
for sure. So yeah, those are the facts on Face Off.
Very nice. It's. I mean, we just
have to get started. Like there's literally my first note is buckle the fuck in.
Because it is like it is going right away and you know,
there's nothing quite like beginning an action movie with some child murder. I mean
that's really kind of really set. So we've got John
Travolta's character, Sean Archer, FBI agent, and his five year old son,
Mike. Mikey, Michael, whatever. Little five year old pumpkin
pie hair. Yeah, little, little bad, little bowl cut on him. Real gross,
Terrible, terrible haircut. But they're on a carousel apparently we learn later at Griffith
park in Los Angeles. And they're just going around, whatever. But then quickly we are
shown the, the barrel of a sniper rifle with a scope and everything. And so
off in the distance is a mustachioed Nicholas Cage playing
the character Caster Troi. And he is, you know, gets down and is like
looking at Archer through the, through the scope on his rifle. But unfortunately
at one point he like turns to take a sip from his soda and he
kind of looks away and when he looks back through the scope, he doesn't see
the child at all. He just sees Archer and it's his back. It's like a
perfect shot kind of thing. So he takes the shot. We actually get a really
great little image of like following the bullet for a while, the bullet cam kind
of thing and shoots through Sean Archer's
back, through his chest and unfortunately killing young Michael.
Yeah, and really, and this happens very quickly.
This is just a couple of minutes if that. And yeah, I mean
the Travolta character just kind of writhing in the pain of losing
his son and secondarily being shot. The scene of the balloons being let go and
flying into the air, but, but it doesn't linger. I mean, we don't have to
see the kid die slowly. I mean it's terrible, but at
least it's not so graphic as far as what it's showing. It seems like whatever
the bullet that hit him killed him sort of instantly. So there's no suffering.
He's not seeing whatever that's all great. But we do get this clear indication and
there is a look of, I won't say regret,
but there is a look of like, aw, well, that sucks.
From Castor Troi. It doesn't look like he wanted to kill the kid.
He doesn't look happy about that. He's also probably pretty unhappy that Archer continues to
crawl along the ground. So he's clearly not dead. Right. If he had just shot
him in the head, the whole movie be done by now. It would have been
a one minute movie. But you know, that's. But then there would have been nothing
for John Woo to do. No, exactly six months. So we cut to the
title card or whatever on the screen says six years later. So now we've gone
from 91 to 97 and we have. Castor Troi has
lost his boss ass mustache, which I really think is a massive failure.
If he could have grown that thing, they should just let him keep it through
the whole thing. But I guess that's one of the ways we see time pass.
Right. Very important to show us time passing. See your mustache disappearing. Right. So Cage
is dressed up as a priest. Yes. And he has the coolest 1997
touchscreen little computer tablet thing that lets him like type in a code.
And there's this like very bad sort of, you know, four color gif of
of a woman. And it says like Sinclair is armed or whatever. It's like,
oh, and he's just banging away at the keys like Simon Phoenix, like not looking.
And he's smoking in a way that's like the dorkiest
person in the world was told to show someone how cool smoking is.
It's really funny. Like the stuff in this, especially in the
very beginning of this film that's supposed to show how like badass and cool
the Nick Cage character is, is just like, oh, Jesus Christ.
Like there's still dudes like that, but they're 55. Right. And still doing
that kind of stuff, so. Or older. Really good though. But very similar,
stylized and very, you know, a great setting and
everything. And he goes and, you know, does what he does at the terminal and
then he's in the priest costume and there's a chorus that are doing Handel's Messiah.
That's right. Right. That's right. And so he does a little like kind of head
banging, twerking, unhinged dancing. That looks bizarre from anyone.
Very bizarre from a priest. Yeah. And at this point, just from that scene,
and we're five minutes into the film, I wrote down only Cage and
underlined it because to do that without it looking like he had to
stand up and go, just kidding afterwards is like, only Nicolas Cage can contribute
an earnestness to this fucking weird ass behavior. Anybody else that could have done
that convincingly wouldn't have worked as an action star. Right. That's the key.
Because there's other people that could have done it. Maybe not at this time in
his career, but I'm thinking Will Ferrell or somebody like that, whatever. But it would
have been goofier. It wouldn't have been coming from somebody who is then
also this sinister criminal, terrorist assassin guy, whatever. Right.
So. And of course he walks up to, I'm sorry,
I'm gonna say it, clearly underaged teenage girl and grabs
her ass after whispering in her ear. And it's just like, man, this is,
this is the 90s, we don't need this. Really? Like, like I
feel like this was acceptable in the 90s in a way that it wouldn't be
today. Yeah, it's just, it's just not necessary. And it would be one
thing if he had just grabbed her ass, but he makes this face that makes
me like not even want to grab my own wife's ass.
It's just like, oh, okay. Tells me that ass grabbing is
creepy and weird and no one should ever do it because holy moly. You know
what it is? It's the two handed ass grab. Yeah. If you grab your wife's
ass, you're just grabbing with one hand. Yeah, one hand, one cheek, give it a
good squeeze. Right. If you do a two hand ass grab, there is something kind
of weird that's true. Gross about that. So yeah, unless they're about to like fall
off a cliff, hold them back. That's a whole different. And we're talking about permitted
assessment, by. The way, consensual ass grabs. Not random people, and certainly not people
underage or whatever, but like, you know, married ass grabs.
Okay, so the Nic Cage character now has left this
convention center that he's in, right? And he's going to meet up with his
crew. And at this time, the Travolta character, we see, he's part of the anti
terror team or whatever. Shawn Archer, he makes a comment, he's FBI,
but he makes a comment about like ZPD on something and they're like, no,
like they're not returning our call. He goes, oh, right. Because we're a covert anti
terrorism organization that's so secret. When we snap our fingers,
nothing happens. Like he's super pissed about it. He's super aggro, stressed out,
pissed off. I want to take a quick second to just talk about on the
grand scheme of, hey, that guy's been in something else. His little crew of people
is all stars. So first of all, there's Margaret Cho. She's Margaret Cho. She's fantastic.
It's Margaret Cho. Then there's the guy who plays Buzz, was Mike Delfino on Desperate
Housewives. So one of the major characters of that show, the guy who plays Loomis,
was in American Psycho, but more importantly, it was Gavin Belson on
the TV show Silicon Valley, which is a fantastic show from hbo. He's the one
who gets his ear shot and then regrown, whatever, and then Tito is one
of my favorite TV shows. Burn Notice was in about a full season's worth of
episodes of Burn Notice as this character Vaughn, who sort of runs this Illuminati
of assassins and stuff around the world. Nice. But, yeah, so it's just like kind
of like this hit after hit of, like. That guy was in that. That guy
was in that. That guy's in that. I just love this. In the great.
I don't know her character's name. The great CCH Pounder as the.
Like, some kind of authority figure in the department. Like,
she's always in that role. She's in the new gun. She's in, like, a million
things. I think she was like, yeah, like, the Wire and secret. Secret operations
or black ops or something. I mean, she's some kind of, like. Yeah. Under undercover,
like, unit or whatever that she runs. Super loaded, though. Yeah, super loaded. Crazy cast,
as usual. Yeah. Okay, so. So Caster Troy leaves
where he's going. Wait. First we find out that at Archer's thing, they find out
that a jet was just chartered at LAX
and it was paid for by Pollux, right? Oh, that's right. Yeah. Castor's brother
who. And they said they don't ever. He doesn't ever travel alone.
Alex doesn't fly without big brothers. That means Castor will be there. Let's get one
of our people on the plane. Yeah. Castor's walking up.
He pulls up in the car. He gets out, and he's got this trench coat
flying off of him. It's a slow mo scene of how cool he is,
right? So he gets out, and he has these dumb sunglasses on in this trench
coat. He walks up to his crew. He spreads his arms like James Brown
so that someone can take the coat off of him, and then they open up
this little box of Buzz's private stuff, which,
like, has, like, Chiclets and pills. And then these two
gold pistols that have, like, dragons on them. Super cool.
And then a money clip that's a gold dragon. And then a pair of way
worse sunglasses that he then takes off his shitty sunglasses and puts on the even
worse sunglasses just to show. Hard disagree. Hard disagree.
I like the, like, sort of. He's got little, like. Like, octagon lenses with,
like, a purple. They are a little small, but I actually kind of like the
ones he changes into. But, yeah, that's okay. He's.
At the time, I thought that was really cool. I could have got a hold
of those octo glasses, man. Those were sick. So he
immediately gets on the jet and sits down, like, before they've even closed the
staircase up. And he's like, let's go, let's go. I'm bored. Let's go.
Right? And so then there is a woman on the plane, like a stewardess,
basically. And she's on the phone, and we kind of get the sense. Because the
last thing we heard from Archer is, let's get one of our people on that
plane. We kind of get the sense, but it's not. She's talking to somebody.
She goes, hey, actually, my passengers are here.
I gotta go. Which is like. Could be just. Like. She could just be a
stewardess. But we think it's probably somebody who's working with Archer.
So Castor and Pollux get on the plane. Pollux sits down. He's got, like,
his briefcase or whatever, and Castor sits down. The woman brings him, like, a drink,
like a cocktail or something, whatever, a glass of brandy or some shit. And he
sits down, and she says, and here's the thing. First of all, she is dressed
matronly, like a turtleneck and
just very beige pantsuit or something. She's not dressed sexy.
She doesn't look like a sexy stewardess or anything like that. But the second he
sits down and she goes, oh, here you go. And if you'd like anything else
when we get in the air, just let me know. Which to me,
didn't sound like flirting. It sounded like that's what a stewardess
says. But he takes it as like, oh,
come sit down. His line here is the gross of shit.
Do you want to do it or you want me to? If I were.
If I want my voice, oh, I'll do it. No, go for it. He starts
saying, if I were to send you flowers, where would I. No,
wait, let me rephrase. If I were to let you
suck my tongue. You can't make me laugh.
Would you be grateful? Oh, my God, I love it. I love
it. You did a way better caged voice than me.
Holy shit. But yeah, the caster. And this is one of those things.
As a dumb 17 year old that had never had any girls
before, I. Was like, oh, that's cool. That's how cool guys get girls. Like,
oh, I'm gonna use that line. I'm gonna use that line.
I could eat a peach for hours. Oh, my God, he's so gross.
But it's perfect. But it's perfectly gross. It works so well because you have to,
like. Because they've already given this guy's kind of like rap sheet earlier.
They're like, oh, he's been involved in political assassinations and terrorist detectives. So he's
not just Jesse James. He's like a world class criminal, like Bond villain
level of criminal. And he's not like a freedom fighter or a revolutionary.
He's for hire. He is. Somebody pays him to kill people or blow shit up
and he does. That's it. Right? And so, yeah, so there's that. And then,
so we get to. Now we know that Archer's on
the way. The plane starts to move, I think first. And then the cops like
roll up and they are, they are, they're running. You know, they got the.
He's in the Humvee with Tito and he's, you know, they got all the cops
and the sirens on. And for whatever reason, Archer and Tito are coming from where
the plane's headed. All the other cops and helicopter and stuff are following them.
Right, whatever. So Troy starts freaking out. Castor Troy starts freaking out
and he's like telling the. He's telling the pilot, fly, bitch. Like, you know,
he's like trying to like get him to go. And this whole sequence, like this
very much reminded me of Demolition man, where the opening of this movie, not maybe
not the opening opening, we had the whole like Mikey had to get killed or
whatever. But like when we get to this point, it's like we are 6ish minutes
into the movie and this feels like a climax. Oh, yeah, right. This feels like
the climax of an action movie. So they are chasing the plane. They're, you know,
whatever. He's trying to play chicken. Archer is with the plane up front.
He notices through the windshield that because Winters,
the woman who's the stewardess, she at some point goes, you know, FBI, freeze.
And pulls her gun on Castor. But like, Pollux throws his briefcase at her.
And, like, wrestles or the gun away from her so that they've got her,
and he, you know, Castor pulls her up to the front of the plane and
puts a gun to her head. Archer sees her, and I
got to be honest with you, first of all, you can't really play chicken with
a plane. That wouldn't have worked out very well for the guys in the Humvee.
But, like, did he think that Castor would let her go if he, like,
turned away? Because the way that he goes, oh, they got Winters. And he,
like, yeah, like, yeah, that's what happened. But, like, that's not. That really
shouldn't change anything about you're doing. Right, right. Like, you. You. You just have to.
I mean, just deal with it. This is part of the job. Like, it sucks,
but that's kind of what the thing. What the job is for. And, yeah,
he has her, like, in the open door of the side of the plane,
and. And, you know, he has this look on his face. Like, it's this release,
this, like, orgasmic release as he, like, shoots her, throws her off
the plane. And then he gives this kind of, like, Tim Robinson looking shrug.
That absolutely killed me. Oh, my God. One of yours, Sean?
Yeah. Oh, my God. So then Tito and Archer,
they stop their Humvee while the plane keeps going. And then Tito gets out and
runs over to Winters to check on her, and Archer is getting into a helicopter
like, he doesn't give a fuck. Like, it's like, I don't care if that's my
person. Like, screw it, I'm gone. And everybody else is like, damn it, Sean.
You know, like, they're basically. He is the classic, you know, the cop that plays
by his own rules. He's. He's Mel Gibson and Lethal Weapon. He's, you know,
whatever. He's going, cash. Like, he's all that shit, right? And so he's
now in the helicopter, and he's, like, flying after the train, which. The plane,
which still has not gotten off the ground. And he.
Castro, goes up to the pilot and is like, what the fuck are you doing?
Like, get off the ground. You know? And that's when Archer
kind of, like, does a really cool thing. He kind of, like, lands the little,
like, landing skids of the helicopter onto the flaps of the plane so
it can't rise up and get any lift. I was like, that's kind of a
neat, you know, plan. So now the gun fighting has to happen between the plane
and the helicopter, which is great. And Caster has shot the Pilot.
Right. He got so frustrated because the engine was out.
So the pilot says, we lost an engine, we have to stop. And then Caster
just blasts him away. Does not have time. No use for you anymore. And then
he tries to, like, just drive the plane like it's a car. Like it's a
car. Yeah. Into what the first looks like a hangar is kind of what it
looks like. Later learn. It's more like a maintenance testing thing, I guess,
whatever it is. But he does that. And this was like the first. I have
two times in my notebook for this movie that I wrote down in all capitals,
John Woo in the house. And this was one of them. Because when Castor
Troy comes flying out that plane door, jumping with guns
akimbo. Right. Like, firing with both at the same time. The dual wielding pistols is
such a John Wu thing. I don't think he like invented it or anything,
but it's such a classically John Wu trait. You have the dual wielding pistols
and. And this was, you know, a great gunfight. There's, there's.
There's a lot of. So much going on here. Yeah. There's one guy who gets
shot with a shotgun and you can see the rope that's
like yanking him back to like make him fly back.
But you need that over the. The top thing. Archer going
after Troy does the thing where he grabs onto a chain that's connected to the
floor and disconnects it from the floor by shooting it and just gets a free
ride up to the ceiling and then slides down a plane wing. Like it's a
slide. It's just. It's so good. And like, I've never tried because
I'm a normal person shooting a chain link to try to break
it. But I can't imagine that's easy. You must have to hit that just right.
Yeah. You know, but it seems to happen in movies a lot. It does,
but it did seem to work. Again, this is like, you know, John Woo is
just. Is all about over the top action and kind of acrobatic action.
That's one of the big things of it is it's all very acrobatic. There's jumping
and sliding and tunneling or tumbling and all this different stuff.
And it's really great. Yeah, it's just.
It's crazy. This whole scene is really incredible. And there's agents
getting killed and, you know, they end up in a standoff.
Basically. Castor and Sean are guns pointing
at each other's faces and they're in a standoff and they have that classic conversation
of you only got one bullet left. Oh, you must know your guns. You only
got one bullet left too. That's right. I always love that you can hear what
gun each bullet's coming from. Yeah, it's interesting too. I can't remember, I didn't write
down any exact examples here, but I have
this general idea. From the scene where Sean Archer and Castor Troi as
characters are written very differently from each other in this movie,
most of Travolta as Sean Archer, his lines are
boring, he says boring things. He doesn't have good lines. He's constantly just
kind of frustrated with what's going on around him. Whereas Cage as Caster Troi has
a bunch of this really great sort of phenomenon. Phoenix. Yeah, exactly. Very fun bad
guy language and sayings and different little things that he does and little
one liners and whatnot. And then what you'll notice as we go through the movie.
And again, I don't write down examples, but when we get in the movie,
everybody gets written like Castor Troi is because later on when what I refer
to as Troiter and Archroi, you know, they basically,
Travolta playing Troy dressed
up as Archer sounds like Troy because Troy doesn't know how to mask how he
sounds. But Cage as Troy, faced up
like Archer, has to try to sound like Troy to continue living in
his world. So they both end. So the screenwriting comes together and the dialogue
ends up sounding similar to each other. But it's like at this stage you can
really tell the difference between how Archer and Troy are written as characters. I thought
is like incredibly. Just very descriptive, you know, very. Just impressive by the screenwriters.
So. Something I wanted to throw out there? Yeah, no, no, that's. That's definitely good
to point out because they do. Yeah. You see the evolution for sure.
Yeah. So they're in a standoff with each other, guns at each
other's head, and Archer's basically like, look, the difference between you and me is I
don't care if I live. Which is a wild thing to say, is a man
with a daughter. Daughter and a wife. You should care a little bit,
right? Like at least a little. Jesus Christ. And then, and then Troy
at some points, like goes to shoot him and he has no bullets. Yeah,
he was. So now he's screwed and he's begging for his life and he's just
kind of like singing and everything. Now I'm ready for the big ride. Big ride,
baby and he tries to pull a knife out of like, out of the back
pocket or his leg or something, whatever. And he goes to stab Archer, but Archer
kicks the knife hand away. Yes. And then Troy ends up, like, getting pushed
in front of this, like, jet engine on, like, a testing platform. Yeah.
And then accidentally, as he goes by to try to brace himself, pushes the button
that, like, turns on the afterburner or something. Yeah, I think it was Archer that.
Actually was it Archer that did it. He knew the button to push. Oh,
okay, I see. It looked more accidental initially, but there's a lot of cuts back
and forth. But, like, so that happened. And that blows TROY Rather back
50ft, like, a long ways through the air against a metal grate and ostensibly
killing him, or at least knocking him into a coma, I guess, is what really
happened. But. Yeah. And it's a notable stunt double that does not look like Nicholas
Cage. The stunt doubles in this movie are not good. It shows too much of.
There are several scenes later, especially where the stunt doubles look real bad
in the speedboat chase and a few other places. Yes. Even when it's, like,
a haircut. Yeah. Like, this whole movie is about how easy it is to change
the appearance of somebody. Fucking prove it. John Woo. Goddamn.
The stunt double's like, well, couldn't you have hired the Evans Institute
or whatever. The fuck that was? Did you need, like, a Latino actor to be
the stunt double? Could you have not found two white guys? It's crazy.
Okay, so this was a great scene
here. So now Castor Troi has been his.
Dad as far as we know at this point. Right. Archer comes home, and we
get a little glimpse into his home life. And this is a scene that,
in 1997, the reveal, so shocking. And we're like, oh, my God.
And they're talking about, well, his daughter is getting in trouble at school. People are
giving her a hard time. And she turns around to reveal that she
has a pretty, like, unoffensive nose ring and a little more mascara than
normal. Well, she did. She did take that mascara and turned into, like, almost,
like, little sunburst. It's like a rounder eye. Did a little mouth something. But it's
not that bad. And, yeah, the nose ring is like a single loop. It looks
very like Joan Osborne. It's like nothing. You know, it's really funny. And, like,
I'll just put it out there, like, at the time, Dominique Swain, top of
my list. Like, absolutely gorgeous actress. And I think, like, literally, I looked it up.
She was, like, born in 80, so she's like, exactly our age. Everything. And,
like, you know, absolutely stunning actress and very much worked for.
For, you know, high school me as far as, like, oh, yeah, we should protect
this one. Look at her. Like, you got. You got to make sure you save
her, Sean. Like, you know, but, yeah, but she. We're giving this. And,
yeah, she has her hair up a little bit. She doesn't look that crazy.
Like, there's no. They didn't color her hair. They didn't give
her, like, tons of piercings, no tattoos. Yeah, it's not that bad. It's all very
temporary. But he reacts like, oh, God, look at that.
I mean, he reacts like, it is such the end of the world that she
has a nose ring. Now. I will say my wife had got her first nose
ring. It was either very late night, probably the late 90s before she and I
met, and her dad used to refer to how she has shit in her face.
You got all that shit in your face, like, one nose ring. You know what
I mean? So it was a thing back then that people overreacted. Sure,
it's a facial piercing. I mean, accurate. Accurate reflection of the culture at
the time. But now it looks very much like, oh, she only has one nose
ring. What's wrong with her? And so then Archer is telling his wife Eve,
played by Joan Allen, about how it's over. Caster's dead. Like,
we're done. You know, I'm going to put in for a desk job. And she's
super excited, whatever. But he does the thing. And he does it all throughout the
movie. He even did at the beginning. I didn't mention it. But, like, at the
beginning with Mike Michael on the carousel, he, like, puts his.
I'm gonna try to calm down. He puts his disgusting ass hand right on
people's faces and, like, swipes down like he's wiping his butt. But it's their
face. It's the grossest thing that's supposed to be,
like, a symbol of endearment and love that I've ever seen in any movie.
It grosses me out every time he touches anybody's
face. It's like, get your hands off of people's faces. Post Covid.
It does not work whatsoever. But even at that time was a little, like,
if you had any kind of. Of, like, aversion to germs,
then you would not like that. I remember seeing it in the movie theater at
17 years old and thinking, that's weird. Why would you touch somebody's face like that?
And then only as time went on did I go, that Is fucking disgusting.
Get your hands off her face. Like so. Yeah, gross. But they needed a face
thing. You know, they needed something important. The face to go
through or whatever. They should touch cheeks to each other or something. But also a
symbol or a sign that is like not a common showing of
love. So that later when he does it, it's like a sign that it's actually
him kind of thing. Like, I get why it exists. It's still gross as hell.
Yeah, this is disgusting. So. So Archer's
back at the. He's at the. The office, right? And they,
hey, congratulations, Agent Archer, we got him. And they give
him some champagne. He's kind of like, what's this for? What about all? And he's
listing the people that he died. He mentions Winter, so we assume it's like all
the agents who died in the pursuit of Troy. It's actually. Yeah, the bottle,
the champagne. So the CIA. Here's the thing. The bottle is from the CIA.
And he makes a crack about I didn't know they catered. Which is like one
of the only half decent lines he has at this. At this point as the
character. But the note on it says just for Sean. Okay.
That's what it says on. On the note on the Dom Perignon. It's a bottle
of Dom. And it says just for Sean. Right? Like. Like it's just for you.
Weird. The thing is, is that that's why he then says, what about
for Peabody and Smith or whatever the names he lists off. What about for the.
But we don't see that note until after he gives that speech.
And it's like it would have made so much more sense that he's saying that
if he'd looked at and go, just for Sean. Well, what about for so and
so? And what about. It's like, dude, how is that missed? Like, but it's the.
You do glimpse the note near the end. It says, just for Sean. But he's
also not talking to the people that delivered the Just for Sean champagne. They're not
there. Yeah, he's just bitching at his own people. They've just closed a case that
is like, obviously many more than six years long. Because six
years ago, Troy tried to kill him. Right? So he's been on Troy's back
longer than that. On his trail. This man killed his son.
And it is now done. He has won. And he's not even allowing
himself a moment. Here's the thing, as. As a manager, because that's
what I do for a living. The fact that he won't even let his team
celebrate that win, even if he didn't feel like celebratory. Total bullshit.
Like, absolute crap. That's a crap boss, basically. But that's what he does.
He reacts that way. And so then he goes into his office and he's,
like, looking through dossiers of, like, other people Castor had killed. It gets
to Michael. It's the title of the dossier entry is Carousel
Sniper Victim. That's how they describe him. And the
description in it mentions that Castor didn't mean to kill Michael.
He was trying to kill Sean. It, like, says it in the, like, FBI dossier
entry. That's not what he's giving, like, some kind of, like, you know,
what is. The mental thought process of the killer at the time is, like,
not going to be part of this guy. Oh, my God. I thought that was
funny. That's very funny. Yeah. Okay. So, yeah,
he puts away the bottle of Just for Sean Don. That he's
not going to drink. And so now he's
getting spoken to by this other individual, CCH Powder, and who
I think could get a job at any police department just strictly based on her
film resume. Like, that's enough relevant experience. And. Or with the Avengers.
Yeah. Yeah, for sure. So we
have some information, like, with Castor stuff, we have some information
that there's a bomb. Not just some information, buddy. Schematics.
We've got a zip disk, which was a big deal in the 90s. A zip
disk. You have a whole hundred megabytes on that thing. But, yeah, but it's schematics
for the bomb that we saw him setting up up, you know, just a few
minutes earlier in the movie. And it talks about, like, you know, they're saying things
about it that aren't showing up on the screen at all. They're just talking random
words. But, like, porcelain casing and, you know, biochemical payload
or like, whatever. Basically, it's a big problem, right? And they say it's enough to
level a square mile, which is an enormous amount of, you know,
damage. And then based on the prevailing winds, you know, could kill maybe millions
more, depending on, you know, where the fallout goes. So, obviously a huge problem,
and they don't know where it is, and they don't know when it's going to
go off. They don't know anything about any of that. And Pollux Troi won't
talk. He keeps saying, I'm not going to talk until I see my brother.
My brother. Right, because he doesn't know that Castor he was pulled out of that
fight way early on and arrested. So he has no idea that Castor
didn't make it out of that hangar. I mean, he probably assumes he was captured,
right, that he's been in custody, but he doesn't think he's dead.
The Pollux Troi character is just so,
like perfectly pathetic and sleazy
and I don't know, he plays that so well. That actor is really,
really good. And there's a great too. There's a. There's an element of like,
when he does need to be a badass, he kind of is like he might
need his brother to tie his shoes on his little Converse that he's got his
little Chuck Taylor's. But when Winters pulled a gun on the plane, he immediately threw
that briefcase at her gun hand and like took her down. And like he,
you know, was not useless. You know what I mean? He really was involved in
that way. He's still like a top guy in one of the biggest criminal organization.
Exactly right. Country. I think I feel like this was this, this organization was
run by the Troy boys. I mean, this is their show, you know, so.
And obviously Caster is the sort of brawn,
right? But Pollux is the brains. He's the one. He's the one who designed the
bomb and like, you know, maybe even built it potentially. Right. He does make a
comment about Dietrich using shitty parts or something. So maybe Dietrich built it off of
Pollux's design, something like that. But yeah. Anyway, we'll get to Dietrich
in a minute. But this is when CCH Pounder and Tito tell
Sean, well, there is a way. What if you could walk
into Pollux's cell as Castor Troi and talk
to him and get him to tell you what he wants, what he knows.
And so they go to the. I can't remember the
name of whatever, but it's this institute, whatever, the Wright Institute, maybe something that.
I can't remember what it's called, but they go there. It's somewhere in Orange County.
I think it said Huntington beach on it. So it's not far from la,
but it's this guy who's invented this scientist, has invented this technology for
like all kinds of stuff. So there. So Loomis, the guy who plays Gavin
Bellson, he got shot in the ear during the airplane hangar battle.
And they are like reconstructing an ear out of like. It looks like a 3D
printer. I love that laser ear construction thing. It looks very cool. It works basically
like a 3D printer does now, except you can't make it out of flesh.
And it wouldn't work that way and didn't back then, either. But it really does
look like that, which is kind of cool. So they're, like, reattaching the ear to
this guy while they're talking to Sean about what their plan would be.
Right. And they did say that this, you know, part of the purpose of this
facility is they're able to change the appearance and identities of
different government witnesses and things like that. So that was something that, you know,
the first couple times I saw this, you miss, and I'm just kind of like,
oh, what? Like, why would this even exist? At least try to explain it a
little bit. But, yeah, so they see that. They show him
that Castor Troi is here. He's in a coma. You're keeping him alive. He's in
a coma. He's a vegetable turnip. That's right. And then puts
a cigarette out on. Him, which is like, you know, this is mean. You don't
need to do that. I will say. I mean, at a certain point,
I think legally, Castor Troi is within his rights
to try to escape from this situation because he's being subjected to,
like, medical experimentation against his will and everything. Very mingle up.
So they suggest this to Sean. They're just like, yeah, so we're basically. We're just
gonna put his face on your face, and then you just. Just do that.
Yeah. So pack your stuff up and let's go in the surgery room. He's like,
what the fuck? Why would I do this? And they're just kind of like,
no, dude, all we do is we put your face. They're so casual about how,
no, this is all we do. The doctor literally says, for you, it would be
just a temporary trade. Really. Just a temporary trade.
All we do is. And then he talks about reattaching tear
ducts and blood vessels and stuff, and it's like, none of that actually happens.
When they get to the surgery, it's just like. Like, paper mache. Yeah, they're just
laying shit on shit, you know, it's really bad. But he refuses. So Archer refuses,
and he's like, no, there's other ways I can get to this guy. So I'm
going to bring in his crew. I'm going to bring in his associates, one of
whom is just peak Gina Gershon. I mean, she did
it for me at this time, and she's still beautiful. But, yeah, she was fantastic
in this. So, yeah, he's kind of interrogating people and trying to get
some info. He brings in Dietrich. Yes. Nick Cassavetes.
He's a big, tall, bald guy. And. And he says, you know,
basically, kind of like, you know, I might know some things, but, you know,
you don't got anything on me kind of stuff. And, you know, and he makes
a threat about. So Sasha, Gina. Gina Gershon's character is Dietrich's
sister. Right. And so. And she has a son. And so Archer basically threatened,
you know, to talk to Dietrich. He's, like, threatening, well, I got your sister out
there. I could bring her back in here and, like, you know, we could,
like, get that kid taken away from her. He kind of, like, threatens. At which
point Dietrich looks up and goes. Goes, hey, Sean, how's your
dead kid? Which is brutal.
Absolutely brutal. Gnarly. Just gnarly.
Just so casual. But he basically, like, goes to. I mean, Sean's gonna kill him.
It looks like. He tackles him, gun to his face, like, whatever. And that's when
Dietrich admits to the one piece of information he does know. It's. I heard something
about the 18th. Right. But I don't know. Right. And. And when Caster first
started the timer on the bomb, it was 11 hours worth of. Or 11 days
worth of hours. It was like 200, 164, whatever that comes to.
And so, yeah, so we know that, like, that was the seventh or whatever.
And so on the 18th, I think it's September. I think at some point,
we see that's when the bomb's gonna go off. And so we don't
know exactly how much time has passed since that, but it's like the whole hangar
fight and Caster getting killed or whatever. Supposedly that was the same day that he
started the timer. It was only a few hours later. So, you know that we've
got probably at least nine days of that left or something like that. Like,
there's probably quite a bit of. Of that time left, but that's all. We talked
in an earlier episode about why the filmmaker doesn't want to give you an
exact amount of time, because otherwise, you'll be doing too much math in your
head to figure stuff. Which I do already. Yeah, yeah, totally.
Yeah. So this is imminent,
and it sounds like it's real. So Archer's like,
all right, let's do it. I'll do this. But he tries to just get even.
We get a little moment with his boss, Victor Lazaro, head of the FBI,
supposedly director of the FBI, I guess. But he's. You know, I don't know.
I couldn't tell if they were talking about him being like a director for,
like, LA branch, you know, kind of like west coast or he's supposed to be
like the guy like, you know, like the Cash Patel or whatever. Right? This time.
Right? I don't know for sure. But competent, hardworking person in America, I mean,
they really. Lazaro seems like a dipshit too, so it works out. But, you know,
he says, like, we're not going to evacuate the city on your hunch, you know,
and he's like, it's not. And then Archer goes, I know Castor too well
for this to be a hunch. It's like, no, motherfucker, that is still a hunch.
Like, that's what a hunch is. It's a really hard hunch. It's so strong.
So, yeah, so he agrees. He agrees to do these face
swap. You know, it's insane. But he can't tell anybody. He can't tell his wife.
He can't tell Lazaro. He can't tell his team. Basically, CCH Pounder's character and
Tito, they're the only ones who know that this is happening. That he's going under
this. And the doctor. And the doctor. And he goes home to his wife
for the last time and has to tell her kind of like, well, I have
one more assignment. Because he comes home and she's just like, oh, Shawn, like,
this is the best. He's finally out of our lives. And he's hugging her.
He's just kind of like, yeah, about that. And she, like,
what is she wearing? Is this an episode of the Waltons? This is the most
again, matronly sort of sleep shirt thing.
It looks like 1940s. It's very strange. It's very out of place face.
It feels like what she's wearing, it. Fits with, like, the boringness of like,
well, that's his character. And how that relationship might make her feel, I don't know.
It's not very deliberate, let's put it that way. Yeah.
So Archer, you know, says, it's just going to be a few days I'm going
to be gone. Right. Gives her no details and stuff and then disappears. And then
he's now at the surgery facility. Surgery time.
They line up him and cast her next to each other on these,
you know, surgical beds or whatever, and they start going at it. And I cannot
believe that they freehand the cutting of the face off.
It's just. With a little pen. So many things about it.
So, yeah, just Just freehanding the face. Cut. And then the
little plastic thing just comes over and just yoinks the face off in like one
second. And it's showing, Tito. Like they're watching this happen and
it looks like 15 minutes have elapsed, like during the full facial switch.
And then once the face is laid back on, the doctor comes in with their
hands and they're like massaging it and like moving the eyelids and shit's like,
bro, don't be so like,
what are you doing here? I know they have to show was effective, but it
was really funny. It was really fun. There was this point where I thought to
myself, could you imagine how bad this movie would have been if the roles were
reversed? If Travolta was the bad guy and Cage was the boring homebody.
And then they had to reverse those roles. Like, it just wouldn't have worked.
Worked. It wouldn't have worked at all. They picked the perfect
roles here. And the post surgical
scene here is where I feel like, this is why you get Nick Cage.
Nick Cage is the only guy that can do this scene of
the kind of looking in the mirror, kind of amazed
that it worked. Horrified that he's seeing this face that's tortured him for his entire
life. Horrified still that I am this fucking guy now
and this guy that was dead before is now alive again. And I'm walking around
at him and he starts smashing the mirror. He's, fuck you,
fuck you. Just going crazy. I mean, I like that
reaction. I thought that was cool. Well, and I love the way that little moment
ends where he's yelling, you know, fuck you, fuck you, whatever. And you don't necessarily
recognize it right away because it's yelling. But that's still John Travolta's voice. Yeah.
Because then he goes, wait, why do I still sound like me? And that's when
they go into the like, oh, well, we're going to change your voice. We've implanted
a little thing in your voice box. And then there's just like, they're tweaking stuff
and asking him to say, like, I could eat a peach row or it's like
a deal. And they make it sound like, you know, Nick Cage. So now Nick
Cage sounds like Nick Cage. But he says, the doctor says, like, you got real
careful with this thing. Direct punch to the, to the throat. Even a violent
sneeze could, like, mess, bro, your technology is not
ready for prime time. If a violent sneeze is going to, like dislodge this thing
and blow his Cover and make it clear that he's not, you know, who he's
pretending to be. It's insane. Absolutely insane. Hey, how did you blow this case and.
And get Los Angeles blow into smithereens? Oh, my nose was slightly tickled
by a feather. Yeah. I walked past some black pepper being tossed
into the air and suddenly ridiculous. And so
now we're getting to the point where they're going to send him off to.
I think they call it Erewhon Arrow. Isn't that a grocery chain in
L. A with the really expensive apples? I wasn't sure. I wasn't sure.
Want text somewhere. But yeah.
And again and again. I know we had a guest on a
previous episode who said something about liking new prisons. I just want to say
I don't enjoy new prison. No, this is cool. This is
another cool interpretation of a futuristic prison, which is
something I've never seen before, which are these really cool metal boots that everyone has
to wear. And the whole floor is magnetized, so they can control it
from a central command station. So if you're causing trouble, they can lock your boots.
You can't go anywhere. You can't get the boots. And it says the boots always
tell them where you are. So it's also GPS kind of thing. And it's like
the whole deal. It's really smart, you know, definitely, in that sense that works.
This is clearly, like, meant to be kind of a max security type thing.
This is not like a general prison. This is like a big baddies. You know,
this is basically. You have Flight Con Air to get here, basically. Right. And cage
in a cage. More cage in a row. So four cage movies in a row
where he spends at least some time in prison. Prison. Very interesting.
But yeah, so there's the magnet
boot situation. And so he gets into the sort of general
population after they introduce something. And of course, just like nobody knows that he's
actually Sean Archer because of the black ops or whatever. Clearly, obviously, everybody involved in
this thinks that he is just Castor Troi and whatever. Like, he's in jail.
Like, nobody's gonna, like, let him out until it's time for the
CCH Pounder and Ortito to come get him. Right? So.
But he is walking through the main sort of like, lunchroom looking
to go get. I wrote down the npr, the multipurpose. That's kind of what it
looks like. But, like, so big fight in the NPR coming up. He's got a
giant cookie. He's got a. He's got the tray, and he's got. I swear to
God, I saw a cheese zombie. I'm not sure, but no. So he goes over
to. He's heading over to Pollux, and he gets stopped by somebody. And, you know,
there's this moment where he kind of catches himself, goes, oh, yeah, I bust it.
Sean Archer busted you for. Because, you know, he's still. You know, he's got to
follow that. But then he gets attacked by this, like, big, burly guy named Dubov,
and there's this great fight. And initially, Vodka from the Wire season,
too. That's right. And there's this great fight between the two
of them. You know, so at this point,
this is Archroy. This is Sean Archer with the face of Caster
Troi. So he is a little rusty, I guess. I mean, he was
just in. You know, he was recovering from surgery, like, two days ago or something,
where there's no scarring, by the way, really wonderful procedure that there's literally no
scar where you've had your entire face cut off. Incredible. Really incredible stuff.
It is an Orange county plastic surgeon, so I guess he's got a lot of
practice, but basically, like, he gets in this fight, but he looks a little slow,
and Pollux is kind of looking at him a little funky, but he gets into
it, and he ends up getting the point where he almost kills the guy with
a lunch tray. And that's when they finally, like. Or. No, he goes. And he
doesn't put it. He puts it down. He's going to, like, kill him. Puts down.
And the guard. And the main guard, by the way, played Mimi's boyfriend on the
Drew Carey Show. I'll just throw that out there. Yeah, I've seen him in a
few stuff. He's good. Yeah. And he, you know, zaps him in the back.
So now their boots are both locked, but they both get zapped. Now they're on
the ground with their boots locked down, and he says, you don't. Or I stop
the fights here. You don't stop. Yeah. It's like he wanted him to keep going,
but. Yeah. So after that fight, we cut, I believe, at that point,
back to the Institute or whatever. Yes, right. Because the
EKG for Caster Troy is now popping like mad. And it's
alive. He's alive. He's not in his comb anymore.
And there's nobody working there. Nope, there's nobody there. It's just.
Hey, we're closing it down for the night. You have all the IV
you need until I'm back tomorrow. And I'm gonna go Home and watch some.
Mad about you. No, Nurse. Yeah, well, I mean, mad about you. That's. You know,
that and the critic were a great one. Two points before bed, so. No,
but he's. I love when Nicolas Cage gets up and he gets on the phone.
First of all, he's like, choking sounding because, you know, things are dripping into his
mouth hole. He's got no lips. And so his voice mercifully not showing us a
lot a. Because it would look like shit. Like, there's probably not a way to
make that effect look good. Right. But they. They. I think they
play it well. They do. It's mostly the back of his head or in shadow
or whatever, but he sounds goopy and he's. He's kind of choking his words out.
And he goes, it's all right. It's okay. We're gonna make it. We're gonna work.
We're gonna make it work. You know, kind of thing. We'll take care of it.
Like. So he's basically called his two buddies who are the ones that we saw
at the beginning of the movie. Movie with Pollux. Oh, Walsh. Dr. Walsh. Oh,
that was the Walsh Institute. That's the place. Yeah. So. But he.
We do see Castro. So basically, his goons kidnap Dr. Walsh and bring him to
the institute. And don't tell him clearly what's going on, because it's like he gets
her. He's like, what's this all about? And there's Troy with no face on.
Yeah. You know, and. And we do get a couple of sheen. There's a couple
of very quick cuts, kind of that show the side of his face. And then
I think we see him in the reflection in Dr. Walsh's eyeglasses. And it really
does look like it's Nicolas Cage with ketchup all over his face. It doesn't look
great, but I appreciate the really fast cuts because
it makes you go, what did I see? What did I see?
And so that's really great. Yeah, that's important. And they get Dr. Walsh there,
and he's like, what do you want? And that's where Troy leans in.
He's like, take one goddamn guess. Also, he should not be smoking with that
much open wound. He should not be smoking. They don't smoke for, like, two weeks
after you get a wisdom tooth pulled, you know, like. Yeah, you probably shouldn't get
your full face off. But he doesn't seem like he's really planning for the
long term in general. Yeah. So now we're kind
of back. So this is happening. And we're back at the prison, right? Yeah.
All right. Hi, this is Steve here. We decided it would be easier
if we just switched voices throughout this, so it wasn't so confusing. Nick and
I. No. All right, so Archroid,
that's why I use those names in my notes. Archroi is Sean Archer with Castor
Troy's face. And then Troiter is Castor Troy with Sean Archer's face. That's how I
kept them separate. Okay, cool. I don't know if that helps or not, but that's
what I will say. Hey, send us an email if you think this helps this
show at 2dads1movie.com. We're have to make this like a two part episode, it feels
like at this point, but like. Yeah. So basically, finally,
Castor is chatting with Pollux in the joint and Pollux
makes a comment. You know, it's like he's the Caster. Says to him, Archroy says
to him, like, oh, your bomb is so good, it should be in the Louvre.
And Pollock's like, yeah, it should be. I guess the LA Convention center
will have to do instead. So now he knows. He knows when it's going to
go off on the 18th, which is still a few days away. And he knows
where it is. It's at the LA Convention Center. So he goes and basically goes
back to his cell. I don't know if he's just waiting it out because they
were going to come get him in two days no matter what. Was like the
point, right? So I think at this point he's just waiting it out. But then
he's brought and told, like, hey, you've got a visitor. So he's thinking, so cool.
It's Tito. He's coming to pick me up, right? He goes to this room all
alone. They lock his boots down and sure enough, it is him. It's Sean
Archer, right? It's John Travolta. So it is Troi as Archer
showing up to tell him, hey, there was. He's got this newspaper with him and
it's like inferno. Deadly inferno at Walsh Institute.
And so then we see in flashbacks that he killed and burned
alive Tito and CCH Pounder's character and the Doctor. So everybody
who knows that the Caster Troi in prison is actually
Sean Archer and that the Sean Archer walking around is actually Caster Troi, they're all
dead. And the facility one would use to
restore what was originally taken is also gone too.
So there's that. Luckily his face still exists. It is a stauncaster's.
Head. Yeah. So he freaks out, and he leans into Archroy
and he says, says, I've got a government job
to abuse and a lonely wife to fuck. At which point he just starts
choking him, saying, die. I mean, this is like a Twilight
Zone level of hell that he's been doing. Now he's in this prison, which is
hell on its own, as his worst enemy. And the worst face he
could ever have, looked back at him through a mirror. And now someone's out there
as him. Like, unbelievable. Now I was thinking, though, if he had just, like,
punched him in the throat a few times and busted that little voice box that
was super weak, like. Yeah, exactly. He would sound like Castor Troy again. But,
oh, well, then he could bust his own and sound like Sean Archer. Right.
You know, but anyway, so we get. We cut from here. We go back
to home. The Archer home, right? So Joan Allen
is there, and, you know, she. Again, she's very pretty,
but they have her. Yeah, they have her dress. So boring. Yeah, they really do.
But basically, like, you know, Archer's back. He's back from his,
you know, the mission that she couldn't know anything about. And she's pissed about it,
but he's, like, flirting with her pretty hard because it's Caster and he wants to
get in them pants and whatever. So it's a little, like, different vibe,
you know, for them. And it just kind of starts hinting at, like, the way
that relationship is going. In the meantime, back at prison, Castor Archroy
sees Pollux being let out. And he goes by bro. Oh, God.
Right. The way he does that little pinky wave. Yeah. Because obviously
Archer, having told Pollux, you know, again, Troiter having
told Pollux whatever he would need to hear to understand who. That he's really Caster.
Yeah. Is let him out. And it's kind of like, hey, we get to take
advantage of, like, a government, you know, job. Like, I'm in the FBI. This is.
We could make this work for us kind of thing. But he has to release
him so that he'll cut a deal and he'll interrogate Alex. Right. He can't just
let him out for no good reason. And there's also a scene that's kind of
like in Con Air where you have this tension where the Buscemi mass murderer
characters talking to the little girl, and you're just like, oh, my God, come on,
come on, come on. When the fake Travolta is home with his daughter
and goes to Reach, and you're just like, Jesus Christ. And he just goes and
like, you know, grabs cigarettes. I will say I think he's. He's a all time
piece of shit. He's not as big of a pedophile as he could
be, which is the lowest compliment you could ever pay an individual. But he
kind of gives some halfway decent fatherly advice to her in the.
In the couple, you know, days that he's around. There's. There is definitely,
like. Yeah, there's stuff near the end that is actually decent advice, I guess,
in a lot of ways, considering that she's dating Danny Masterson. So that's just a
terrible idea. It's weird that he plays himself in this. I know, right? I literally
wrote the exact same note. Dude, Danny Masterson plays himself.
Anyway, we're not even there yet, but. Yeah, but basically he's, you know,
he. Papa's got a brand new bag. You know, he's like, whatever. And the daughter
Jamie is, you know, although thank God for him that she had her name
written on a pillow in his room. Because she. He calls her Janie. Yeah.
And she goes, jamie. And he looks over and sees Jamie and like, like,
you know, applique felt letters on some. On some pillow and goes,
jamie, you must have misheard me, Jamie, like, you know. But yeah,
like, so. So this is basically all this stuff where. Yeah, like, like the new
Archer is taking over the old Archer's life and existing within it.
They do say, we're sorry to hear about Tito. And his reaction at the
office is, shit happens. Shit happens. Yeah. That's his best friend. Good lord. I know,
right? So then he has to convince Pollock, hey, man, you got to give up
the bomb. And Pollock's like, yeah, but if it doesn't go off, we don't get
our $10 million. He goes, yeah, yeah, but look at the big picture. The government
job. I get to be the hero that disarms the bomb. Like, just tell them
where it is, and then I'll go disarm it. It'll all work out fine.
I will say, when they get to the disarming part, they get to that scene,
the bomb squad's like, sir, like, we don't have any way to do this.
It's like, you got to leave. Like, we just got. We're all screwed. He's like,
no, no, no, just get out of here. I'll do it. Go, go. You know?
Yeah. And he goes. And he is way too casual because he types in his
little code and it doesn't work initially. And There were very confident
left. When he actually puts in the code, the timer says two
seconds. The news report later says one second. It was wrong. It's two seconds.
But he has no sweat on his brow and is totally cool. I mean,
like, two seconds away from dying, dude. Yeah. Like, that's wild
to me that he was so casual. But, yep, sure enough, he is a hero.
He's a hero. He's. Yeah, he gets,
you know, lot and he makes. And they're watching in the prison. They're watching the
news report. They're showing that on the. I will say, I mean, the prison looks
like a terrible place to be. They got a nice TV wall, though. Big TV
wall. Yeah. And which I'm sure the prison is doing to torture it.
Because in the world of this movie, like, 30% of the guys there were
all arrested by Shawn Archer. Yeah, it seems like exactly. This is very much
Arkham Asylum and Archer is Batman. Yeah, but. Yeah,
so he's a hero. But now he goes home. And when we see the home,
the dining table at the Archer home, it is laden
with so much food, it is ridiculous. This is a dinner for
two. Oh, yeah. There are two whole cooked lobsters.
There is an entire, like, you know,
bowl of spaghetti for like four with sauce on
it. You've got rolls and salad. There's skewers
of vegetables, like grilled vegetable skewers and a dozen artichokes
in a bowl. What is this? Like, this is a
ridiculous amount of food for like 10 people. It's like what Kim Jong Il would
put out when people visit in North Korea. It really is. It really
is a despot type type, you know, tablescape. It's interesting.
Yeah. But just a ridiculous amount. And so he, you know, basically comes home and
wines and dines his own wife and they make love. Which we, of course know
is, you know, technically now he's cheated on or she's cheated on her husband.
Right. And no mention throughout the thing they were talking about. Oh, you're each,
you know, you're about the same height, about the same bone structure, and, you know,
we can do body hair stuff. Nothing about dick size. Not a word they even
specifically mentioned. It's a very good point. But they specifically mentioned for to move Archer
into Troy's visage, that they had to get rid of the abdominoplasty.
Right. Where they get rid of some love handles. But it's not like Castor would
have had the doctor inject fat into his torso. Right. So,
like, she should have been able to Tell that their body was dead different.
But he does comment later that he says, like, I don't know what I like
what I hate more, this face or this body. Well, that's true. So I
think he had the full thing because he wanted to be exact. That's a good
point. That's probably what happened. Yeah. But I did write down could she tell
a difference, you know, downstairs? Apparently not. So.
Well, that's that. Maybe they're just not doing it often enough. She kind
of can forget her diary. Did say it had been two months. Yeah. So that
was whenever she wrote that diary entry, which I don't know even know if we
know that. So. So back in jail now. So.
So Cage has seen this on the tv. He's got to
get out of there to save his family. Right. And. Or just to whatever.
He's got to get the hell out of there. And they. He's like trying to
find out how do you get these boots off. Right. The only time you take
the boots off is when they're like frying your brain in the shock therapy.
Yeah, the clinic. Yeah. So he basically has to facilitate that
for himself. Yeah, exactly. So he, he says, he walks out. They're in
exercise, so they're just walking in a circle in the npr again, like just
in walking in circles. He breaks out of line, goes up to a guard who's
just starting to light a cigarette. And the guard goes, get back in line,
Troy. And he goes, I'm out of cigarettes. I said,
I'm out of cigarettes. And he starts a fight with this guard and you know
everybody. And he starts beating the guard's ass. The guards start beating his ass,
whatever. They start dragging him away, but he gets the cigarette and he makes a
big show to all the inmates. Ah, anybody got a light? Anybody got a light?
Like, that's freaking awesome. So.
So he goes to take it to the clink and Dubov is already in there.
I ostensibly, I guess from their fight. Before strike or whatever.
Right. So he is in there getting nuked and like puking
up into his own mouth and really disgusting stuff. And so
then he get, you know, Dubov gets thrown onto the floor after his session is
done and they bring Troy in and put him down. And apparently they decided to
take off his boots before actually locking him into the chair.
He gets the guy to help light a cigarette for him. And so he smokes
a cigarette, but he uses that to like, you know, he stabs the like,
doctor. It's like a scientist helper guy. It's Not a guard, right. Trying to put
him into this, like, lock him into this chair. And he gets, you know,
to the. To kind of hits him with a cigarette to like, oh, no.
And then like starts fighting, whatever. But he says to Dubov, because he. Actually the
only thing I should mention, like when he talked to Pollux, he said, I don't
even know why that Neanderthal attacked me the other day. And he goes, oh,
you had a sex sandwich with his wife and his sister on the day he
got in here. It's one of those Pollock's lines that always stuck with me.
So the way he said sex sandwich, like I didn't eat a sandwich for three
years after that. Also, was he in between the two women? Like, it almost seems
like that wouldn't be the most effective way to actually have sex with two women.
Yeah, but I don't know. I definitely don't know about that. And so,
so he says, dubov, I didn't bang your wife and I didn't bang your daughter.
But I know we got to get out of here, we got it together kind
of thing, whatever. And so Dubov decides, yeah, okay, sure. Because he realized, you know,
he's not wearing his boots either. So. So we might as well like, let's do
it. And so he gets up. No damage from the shock for therapy. No,
he's all. He's so nimble. Ready to go. Yeah. And so they basically start fighting
the guards, they get some guns, they're shooting whatever, you know, Troy's injured. This is
again, this is Archroi, this is Archer as Troy. So he's not killing guards.
Right. He's like shooting him in the leg. Really good at the non fatal shots.
Exactly, all that stuff. And he stops Dubov from killing a couple guys at one
point and tells him to get out of there. He starts, does kill a lot
of. Guys, a lot of. But to be fair, it's self defense. I mean,
you are trying to break out of prison, but it is self defense. They would
kill you. Right. If they are given the chance. But Troy starts messing with
this computer thing, right? And it's talking about like overloading
stuff and it's just the TVs. Is that all that. Okay,
so I'm not a computer programmer. All right. When you build a program, do you
have a system overload option built in as part of it where you just like
select it from a box and then it makes everything shoot sparks out of it?
No, I will say bad programming can lead to
you being able to do that things you Know what I mean? Like, oh,
you've turned everything. So I used to work. This is gonna be a weird aside,
but I used to work at a company called nest. They make thermostats and cameras
and shit like that, right? And my boss at the time told me if anybody
ever broke into the central control systems at nest and they
would have an opportunity to turn something like 200,000 thermostats around
the country up, all at the exact same time, which could just completely destroy the
power grid, right? So luckily. Don't get any ideas, listener. This was
a very well protected computer system, don't get me wrong. And it actually really was.
Wouldn't have been that easy to do that even if you got in. But it
was like. But it made me think. It's kind of like, wow, that. That's an
important. You know, you think I'm making, like, devices for people's houses. Like, this isn't
life or death, you know, work. But then it's like, oh, no, no, no.
If this, like landed in the wrong hands and they had like a real malicious
actor, this could be like real bad, you know, kind of thing. So that kind
of thing could happen. But why is it just overloading the televisions? And why is
that something he wants? Yeah, I don't get it. And Archer doesn't seem to
be a computer guy. Like, he's a field guy. And if anything, he's like an
out of touch, I don't understand technology dad type. Like, help me program my
TiVo type. Yeah, yeah, exactly. You know, no VCR plus.
So. So they end up escaping. One scene that I thought was really funny during
the escape is there's just like a big, like Carlos Rossi sized jug
of sulfuric acid with no top on it that he just. Just flings up towards
these guys and shoots it while it's in the air. And it starts. It's like,
why? Why is that there? But, hey,
John Woo is allowed to do whatever he wants. Yeah.
Yep. And then, so then he gets outside and realizes,
oh, shit, I'm on an oil rig. That's what the prison. The prison's built on
an old oil rig. Now when I was watching this time and I first
saw, they go, wait, that's right. How the hell does he get out of here?
Because, like, they're in the middle of the ocean and, like, they're really not.
Because you turn around, you come. Couple of the shots, you see he's maybe a
mile off land, like, which is a long ways to swim in the ocean.
Get me Wrong. But it's not insane. Like, it's not unbelievable that he could.
Make it, but if there's boats and helicopters looking for. This is the thing is
like the. The. The helicopter shooting at him.
1. This is funny. He's running past a bunch of barrels as the, like,
helicopter rifle. Like, it's a big, like, mounted machine gun thing, Gatling gun
shooting after him. And it hits one of the barrels that just shoots straight up.
Like it's in some kind of like a shooting gallery at an amusement park.
You know, it's like, really bizarre looking, but he ends up jumping off the oil
rig into the ocean, which, like, I. You know, if you're real good at that
stuff. And I don't know if FBI folks get trained to, like, do SEAL incursions
or something, but, like, that's hard to do, to jump and not break a leg,
kill yourself, whatever, right? But apparently he does. What I think is hilarious
is that the helicopter didn't decide to hover for, I don't know,
three minutes. He would have had to come up for air at some point.
They were just like, well, he's dead. Dead. Let's go. Let's leave. Let's make sure
we don't look. Let's make sure we leave. Totally insane. Because they do say that
he's dead. Like, that's. This is the official thing. And so we
cut to. We cut back then to the FBI office and
Buzz and I think it's like, Buzz and Margaret Cho's character are like, oh,
my God, boss, Archer, he's dead. Castor's dead. Like, he tried
escaping from Erewhon. He's dead. And immediately Archer's like, where's his body? Yeah, I want
to see the body. Well, they haven't recovered it yet. What do you mean they
haven't recovered it yet? Like, he's, like, freaking out because he knows, like, I'm not
going to take any chances that this guy's not actually dead. I don't think you
should generally take the word that somebody's dead where it's. Like, why did the helicopter
pilots. You know what I mean? Like, like the evil terrorist is a far
more conscientious law enforcement officer than any of the fucking
law enforcement officers. Seriously. Like, well, it was lunchtime, so we had
to go back. Oh, my God. So. So now, now that he's out,
he swam to shore. And we don't need to show any of that because it's
boring how the most crazy thing in the whole movie would have happened. So we
don't need to show it. And he's now visiting his buddy Dietrich, the bald
guy who lives in this sick loft. Amazing. It reminds me of
the art museum from Batman, the first Tim Burton Batman, where they're
having dinner and the Joker comes in. Or many
of the scenes, frankly, in the Crow. It had that vibe very much as well.
Really good stuff. Very cool place. And he's presented
again with his box of Buzz's secret stuff. So he's able to. He's able
to get to his drugs. Again, Including a box of Chiclets. A pack of Chiclets.
The worst type of guy I know, right? Yeah.
So, yeah, he's talking about all this stuff that he knows about Sean Archer.
He's telling Dietrich, I need your help to kill Sean Archer. He's like, how do
you know all this stuff about it? Because he says the code to his alarm
or whatever at his house. He knows the code because it's his dead son's birthday.
That's right. And he's like, how do you know about him? And he goes,
I sleep with his wife. And then it's one of those good. Where the guys
aren't sure if they're supposed to laugh or not. And then they all start laughing.
Scene. Oh, my God. And that's. And that's when they asked. So Dietrich asked him,
like, all right, boss, so once we. Once we. Or one of the guys,
once we kidnap Archer, like, what do you. What do you want to do?
He goes, I want to cut. I want to do a little surgery. I want
to take his face off. And of course, I should mention at this point,
he's done drugs. Right. And this is Archer doing drugs. Exactly. Who's not accustomed to
drugs? Castor's body would have handled these drugs, whatever it was. Dietrich pours,
breaks a couple of pills, capsules open into some. Probably vodka
or something. And so Castor would have been fine, but this is Archer, and he's
never done these drugs. I don't even know what the heck it's supposed to be.
But it's not treating him well. But he's slurring and speaking very slow,
but they all think it's hilarious. And he goes. And Dietrich's like, you want
to take his face off? Yeah, I want to take his face
off. And he makes this sort of hand motion of pulling
the face off, which is really funny. And then my favorite line from Dietrich is
then when Archer, as Troy, goes and lays down, down on the bed, and Dietrich
looks at me, goes, all right, no more drugs for that man.
Before he goes to lay down on the bed, he gets up, he goes,
I gotta go use the little boys wee wee room. It's the
most ridiculous way to say, like, it's disgusting to call it the little boys room.
I hate that shit. I hate it when it happens in movies. But to call
it the little boy's wee wee room, like, bro, you're never gonna beat
the allegations at this point. No, no. Yeah, there's. There's too
many dual meanings there. Yeah, exactly. Looking in the mirror,
saying, I'm not dead, I'm me. You know, really funny.
Yeah. So we've got now Archer
Troi is. Archer is home, and Jamie
is coming back with her date, Danny Masterson herself,
who is trying to sexually assault her.
And he. Luckily, Sean is there and comes out. And beats
his ass, kicks in the window, pulls him out through it, beats him up,
like, the whole deal. Here's the thing, though. If you're Carl in this scenario,
why would you bring the girl back to the driveway of her home
before trying to sexually assault her? Like, that seems like a, you know,
really bad call if you're gonna be that guy. But he does, and he gets
his ass whooped for it. And, you know, Troiter just
does say a comment about, like, you know, like, if you dress up, like,
what does he say? If you dress like Halloween, Googles will try to get into
your pants. That's right. And she says, hey, thanks. The guy tries to rape me
and you're blaming me, right? And it's funny. He has a moment. He goes,
oh, you know what? That's actually a reasonable point. All right, Next time. And he
pulls out a butterfly knife and he goes, next time he tries to do that,
you let him pull his pants down. You stab this into his thigh, turn it
90 degrees so the wound won't close. He'll leave you alone forever. Yeah. And it's
like, like, damn. That's like. I mean, look, I'm not. I don't feel like teaching
my daughter that way when it comes to this stuff, but I like it.
You know, what she needed. I don't think it
seemed like Sean Archer as himself was kind of singularly focused on
his job and on getting revenge and stuff. Not being a parent, not the best.
Like, he was not the dad that she would feel comfortable talking to about
stuff or whatever. Yeah. So, yeah, fuck. Danny Masterson literally
wrote right here, Danny Masterson is just playing himself. They both have the exact same
note. Danny Masterson has himself a two stars next to it.
So now we have Sasha. The Gina Gershon character is with
Archer as Troy,
and she has a son who is another little pumpkin
pie haircut kid named Adam, who kind of looks like Mark Davis,
the owner of the Raiders. Maybe too
long hair in the back and not enough freckles, but man, it is close.
That hairline up front along the forehead. And I feel like the face.
Yeah, I gotta get another look at him. But I feel like he felt very
Mark Davish to me. Absolutely.
So. So, yeah, she tells him, basically,
he's putting his clothes on and she's like. He's like, oh, these are nice
looking clothes. She's like, well, they're yours. He's like, yeah, no, I just like them.
And then he looks at the boy and he goes, that's a nice looking kid.
And then she goes, he's yours too. Dun, dun, dun. It's clear
that she had never told this to the real Caster. Yeah, like Caster definitely doesn't
know that Adam's is his kid. If he knows who Adam is at all.
Near the beginning of the movie, when Gina Gershon's character Sasha was first
interrogated by the real Archer, she said something about.
And we don't know if it's real or not, if it's active, but she says
that she hadn't seen Castor in years. Yeah. So it's entirely possible that Castor wouldn't
even be aware of such a child. But the last time she saw him was
when that kid was conceived. Potentially. Right, Exactly. So there's all that. But of
course, Adam is introduced. Sasha's like,
oh, Adam, this is your dad. Say hello, whatever. And he goes to hug him
and starts calling him Michael, Michael, Michael, Michael. And he's like, freaking out and freaking
the kid out. Yeah. Meanwhile, across the way on
the rooftop, for some reason, Pollux Troy decided to stake out Dietrich's
loft and was looking through, you know, like binoculars or some shit,
whatever, and calls Castor, you know, troiter, and says,
like, you know, decided to drop in on our old friends.
And it looks like he's really enjoying being, you know,
that's my best Pollux impression. That's a good Pollux impression.
But so basically, like, that's, you know, so now Archer calls in the actual,
like, FBI, you know, whatever, SWAT team, lapd, some shit, whatever, to like, attack,
you know, the loft, Dietrich's loft. And so they start. They shoot
a tear grass tear gas grenade through the window. And it's interesting because
you can tell that Archroy hears the the kind
of noise from across the way and get down, you know,
very, very kind of cop mentality, I think. Or at least, you know, anti terrorism
kind of guy would know that shit, you know. And so they're doing it and
I love that they put the headphones on the kid to sort of like give
him, you know, block some of what's about to happen from him having to
recognize it. And the, the song in his headphones is Somewhere over the Rainbow,
I feel is like so perfect. Part of this action
scene. A little bit later we only hear that like it's
in his headphones. And the carnage going on with that song playing is. It's really
cool. Beautiful, beautiful. When the cops first blast in,
there's kind of the slow motion scene of everyone reacting to it. Right. So there's
guys kind of diving for whatever. Dietrich gets up so fucking casually
and business like just. I know exactly what I'm supposed to do. And he just
pops up and like coolly walks back for his big guns, which I really like.
Absolutely. He's been through this before, one way or another. Yeah. So Adam's
just absorbing his childhood trauma while listening to Somewhere over the Rainbow.
Hopefully he'll never have an association with that song for the rest of the season.
Hopefully nothing else in that kid's life will actually be weird or bad. I'm sure
he'll be fine. He's definitely not going to end up with a group of people
who will treat him like another kid. That's not going to happen to him.
Normal justice for Adam. So now
Archer or Troy is Archer. Now Travolta is pursuing.
Yeah. And they're in this. Of course they were going to end up somewhere
like this in this cool room that's like a circle of mirrors, like freestanding
mirrors that are double sided and all in a circle kind of in like a
clock formation. Why? What is this room? Is it like the lobby
of his building? Like, I don't even know what the this is. Is it his
closet? Is this Dietrich's closet? Is that what it's like where he gets ready in
the morning? Yeah. With like a dozen, a dozen mirrors, like facing inside so he
can look at himself from all angles. It's bizarre. But of course it just in
case room. There you go. Exactly. I do love. Before we get to that point,
there's a point where all the fighting is happening and Dietrich's got like this like
grenade launcher, shotgun or something big that he's firing. And he goes, damn, my place
is getting up. Like he's so upset about, like, his, like, Ming Vas and
like, exploding and stuff. It's kind of funny. It's like, no. As soon as this
raid happened, this is no longer your place. When are you ever going to come
back to live here? Exactly. You're just done. You're done. So it up. Yeah,
exactly. So, yeah. So we get the mirrors because we have to have this moment
right. Where the two guys are on either side of a mirror, pointing their
guns, ostensibly at each other, but now they're looking at, well,
themselves, but also then the visage of their enemy in the mirror. It's a cool
moment. It's definitely a cool moment. I liked it. Well worth having a bizarre room
full of mirrors to do this. Totally. Totally. And they both end up shooting at
the same time and doing a matrix dodge of the bullet at the same time.
Neither of them leaned into the path of the bullet, which was good luck,
I guess. So Archer
S. Troy gets away. Cage gets away. And he ends up being pursued
then by Pollux up on the roof. That's right. And Dietrich has been killed.
He was shot in the neck. Gave a very creepy mouth kiss
to his sister. That was bizarre. And.
And just said, get the kid out of here. Like, kind of thing. Gross.
Terrible. So Pollux is chasing
the fake caster up on the roof and he ends up getting put
through. Yeah, he ends up, like, crashing through glass. Well, it's like we
call it a skylight or whatever. But then also down several levels through
the building. It felt like landing back in that mirror room, I think. Right where
Treuture is, where Travolta is standing. And so now Pollux
is dead and he is heartbroken. He is as heartbroken as
Archer was when Michael was killed. Yeah. I mean, it is. It is one for
one in his mind, right. Pollux is basically the only person on the planet Caster
Troy gave even a slightest. About everyone else in the world is there to either
be a victim for him or give him something. That's it.
Pollux is the one person, the only. Person he was ever like, remotely considerate towards
anything. Yeah, exactly. So that is dead now, which is kind of scary
when you've got the one kind of thing you could have kind of held over
a madman's head is like, well, you wouldn't want anything to happen to this guy,
would you? Yeah. Now that guy's gone. Now there's like, nothing you want to talk
about having nothing to live for. Yeah, there you go. That's pretty scary. And one
of the other agents so we see how upset he is. That's dead there.
And one of the agents looks at him. He's like, hey, why are you so
upset? It's just. And then he blasts him, like,
right through the. Right through the. The forehead. And this is the guy that took
the shot in the ear. So Castor got him twice, man.
Oh, God. So things are accelerating now. So he's.
He's back at the office. The fake archer's back at the office, and he's getting
chewed out by his boss. He's like, Lazaro. Yeah. What the. You know, you.
You blew up a bloodbath. But he's like. But he's, like, wincing,
right? He's, like, wincing every couple's sentences. And he's kind of almost clutching. And we
talked. We saw little signs of this guy having maybe a little bit of cardiac,
you know, less than healthiness earlier. And so sure enough,
like, I don't even know if this would work, but he, like, like, grabs him,
throws him to the ground, and, like, elbow. Like a big, hard elbow into the
chest. Yeah. And then covers his mouth, I think, to stifle a scream. But,
like, would that actually be a problem for a person with a heart issue?
I mean, it can't be good to get touched on the heart. But, like,
it didn't seem like it would necessarily, like, kill him in a perfectly simulated heart
attack. Sure. That's the other thing, too, is that this guy's autopsy clearly indicates heart
attack, because nobody ever suspects X. Archer. Troy. Whatever. Haven't done anything. And he was
the only one there when it occurred. But, you know, but, I mean, I guess
the guy is a local and he's a national hero. He's beyond reproach. Exactly.
Everyone's gonna believe what he says. Exactly. But it did seem like one of those
things like we talk about when you're a kid. Oh, there's a way to punch
a guy. His pants. Like that kind of thing. Like. Like the nose bone break.
Exactly. Okay, so now.
Now Arch. Roy. So now. Now, now Archer looking like Troy has broken into his
own home. Use the. The code. Crawling with cops. And he was able to
get in there. He was able to get in through a window or something.
I'm not exactly sure how, but he's. He's gotten in. And you can hear someone
in the shower, or you can hear the shower running. And then. And then Eve
comes out. She's got a robe on. She comes out and she freaks out because
it's Caster Troy. Like, she knows what the guy looks like. And she's freaking out,
but he's trying to explain to her, Obviously, it's. You know, he's like, don't look
at my face. Don't listen to my voice. Yeah, but, like, this is me kind
of thing. And she, of course, does not believe him, but he lays out the
whole thing. And then at the end he says, I know you don't believe a
word I'm saying, but I. Sean, your husband has O negative blood
or O positive. One of the two. Oh, negative blood. Castor Troy has ab.
Just please look into it, you know, kind of thing. And so, sure enough,
the. The whole, like, I mean, later on, she does take a blood sample from
the sleeping troicher in order to test it.
Yeah. And he doesn't react very much to getting poked by something that looked,
like, a little painful. But, you know, she's a professional. She's good at that.
I've used like. Like for blood testing for, like. Like blood glucose, like little,
like. Like those kinds of little punch things, you know, whatever. And they don't hurt.
But you would notice. Yeah, you would notice. Like, I've done it in my fingertips
or whatever it. You can tell. And it would have left a little,
like, blood. You know what I mean? Like, you would have wanted to, like,
put a little band aid on that part, you know? But this is not our
main beef with that, John, was realism in this film. And I would say real
quick, too, that, you know, Archroy does do the hand face crap on Eve
as well, and I think that's really what sells it for. Because nobody but her
husband would touch someone in such a disgusting way as a. As a gesture of
affection. Exactly. And. And they're back at the. They're back at the lab. So she's
discovering on the computer that the blood types are, in fact, different than they should
be. And then he's just, like, there. Yeah, he's like. He'd already broken in,
waiting for her to come or whatever. He's Richard Kimble in all over the place.
Right? Just breaking into facilities. Classic. So, yeah, he does
the gross hand. He wipes his hand out. So disgusting.
I can't get over it. It's. Honestly, I swear to God, when we get to
the end of this, y' all will have got to know. I would have been
a half point higher on this movie if it weren't for the. Damn,
I hate it. Anyway, so. So she's treating him in the hospital at the
same time. Archer is suspicious, like, dude, something's going on here. I got to go
find Eve at the hospital. And he shows up with. With Castor Troy's goons.
Yeah. So now he's fully. He's just ditched his FBI guys. He's got his bad
guy goons. Well, he killed all his FBI guys, but. So he
rips open the curtain and there's Eve like treating some guy who has like a
towel covering his face. And he just comes up and pulls it off. And it's
this disgusting facial injury that doesn't get immediately
covered back up. It's really bad.
It was. And this is a facial injury movie, so we're not like,
you know, this is not unfamiliar territory. We built up a stomach for bad
facial injuries, and yet this one was still pretty brutal.
So they decide that the time to get him,
the time that Archer is going to be the most vulnerable, is at Victor's funeral,
which he has to show up to for appearances. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And Victor's
funeral is. It's set up. It's at some beachside bird
church. I don't understand this place. Yeah, it's a church on the beach. I mean,
it clearly is. Literally like you step out the front door and you're on the
beach. Yeah. So somewhere like Malibu maybe, something like that. But here's the thing I
love. It's a Latin mass. Yeah. The priest is
speaking in Latin that is usually reserved for kind of the more traditional
Roman Catholic parishes around the country. Like, you don't hear Latin mass very often in
most Catholic churches. And I don't think you would hear it in any Protestant church.
Like this 100% would be. And again, last name Lazaro, Italian Catholic.
Yeah, okay, fine. But like a Latin Mass in a. Beach church
where there's like a pina colada machine next door and. And like six pews
and not enough room. They gotta bring in folding chairs just to barely fill the
room. It's a tiny ass little chapel. You know, it's very weird, but yeah,
there are doves everywhere. Should have been seagulls.
Okay, there's seagulls and then there's doves, but there's such a bird. It's like
the 12 days of Christmas Christmas level bird variety. This was my second John Woo
in the house. Note is, when I see the doves. Go, here he is.
And so basically, Eve and Jamie are being held
hostage. So the. The funeral. Is Jamie there yet? Like, because they're
on their way with her, I think. Oh, that's right. Eve and Troy are together.
Troy, as Archer are Together at the funeral. Jamie was away
or a friend's house or something, whatever. But she ends up getting picked up by
one the of. Of Castor's goons, whatever, and brought there.
But in the meantime, it's. I gotta make sure I get
this. Right now, it's Nicolas Cage showing up after the funeral is, like,
done kind of in the chapel. And he is sort of like, praying or something.
I don't know, whatever he's doing. And that's when Archer comes in. And then one
of his goons has Eve. And so it's like now we're in this position where.
And then it's like there's just. Yeah, it's everybody's guns to different
people. Then Sasha shows up and adds to the situation and
she's. And it's just like, now there's at least, least six or seven people in
the room. Everybody but Eve has a gun.
There's a lot of angles that the guns are all pointed and stuff. Classic Mexican
standoff. Very, very, very standard thing for the 90s.
I feel like we saw in Reservoir Dogs and a bunch of other movies.
And Sasha doesn't know who's who, so she thinks that Archer
is Troy right now, who she's been talking to Nick Cage. So when
Travolta's like, sasha, what the. The fuck are
you doing here? I always loved how he said that. And it's one
of the moments where Travolta really put in the effort to kind of deliver a
line the way Cage would have delivered it. And I think that's great. I think
that's kudos to Travolta. He did get some good kudos for this movie. And this
ability to play these characters differently from each other for
both men was very impressive. Yeah. So they decide,
okay, we're doing this here. And Jamie ends up
stabbing. Well, yeah, he ends up in the. Leg, doing the exact thing that
he showed her to do. He captures her or whatever and is like, you know,
aiming. And actually Jamie shoots her dad right in the arm
because he looks like Castor Troi. So that's who she thinks she should shoot.
Because they're fighting and he's saying, like, don't lose. And now he sounds like Travolta
again. Right. He got his throat thing busted. So they. So they both sound like
John Travolta here. And so Jamie is very confused. She ends up shooting her dad,
like, in the shoulder, I think, or arm or whatever. You know, kind of grazed
him. And Archer says, you know, whatever traveled like no daughter
of mine would have shot so wide. And he goes and he like holds her,
you know, hostage. But then, yeah, she gets in and that's when she gets him
with the butterfly knife and twists it and everything, really gives it to him good.
And so he runs off. She's, you know, safe. Ish. Whatever gets
with her mom. And she says something like, could somebody please tell me what planet
I'm on? Like she is freaking out. Which, I mean, you'd have to. Yeah.
Insanity. And then here comes the boats, here comes the scene.
And. And luckily they're both able to run to a dock and get two equivalent
and conveniently colored boats and fully gassed. Up lines
already taken off. So really should be going. But now, of course, Archer, Archer,
Troy, whatever, has to shoot his person to get them off the boat.
Whereas Troy, Archer, out of whatever, like Cage
doesn't have to kill anybody. Yeah. To get his boat. Exactly. He can get it,
the good guy. But they're both going off and then the coaster they're racing and
they're trying to like shoot each other other in their town, whatever. And then a
Coast Guard boat is like blocking the way and they got rifles primed.
Like, if you don't stop, we'll have to open fire. Yeah. And there's a lot
of shooting and whatever. And then somehow the
boat that Nicholas Cage is driving. Yeah.
Goes through the Coast Guard. Right. And jumps it like
it's a ramp. But through it and then like. And it explodes. And there's not
a scratch on his boat. And his boat is fine, perfectly fine. Still going.
The same boats are like notoriously very fragile. Yes.
And can get the propellers bent and like very easily. You could do $10,000
damage to a tiny boat by bumping a sea otter. Like it's not hard,
you know what I mean? Like, it's ridiculous. Like, but this one is apparently made
of adamantium. And so. Yeah. So, so now we're both on
the same boat because Nick Cage has now jumped onto the boat, right? Yes,
exactly. Onto, onto. So they're on one boat together. And he's got like a chain,
like the anchor chain maybe that he's holding onto. And he does the classic,
the great, the, the no ski skiing, hanging off the side. And I
read actually for this stunt, Nick Cage actually
insisted that somebody else do it. Oh, good, good, good idea.
Good idea, Nick. Oh my God, what a crazy ass stunt. This was a really
fun. Yeah, yeah. And just hanging on there for a while and they're. And they're
fighting and they finally end up Crashing at the end, they're kind of like
heading towards shore. They hit like another ramp or something. They end up like going.
Yeah, it's like. Well, no, they hit like, you know those big, big. The things
that like help you dry dock a boat. You can put it in and out.
They bump the boat into one of those. They fly off of it.
So high in the air. Yeah, exactly. So incredibly high. And that's
where the stunt doubles not looking like them is the worst because they're facing the
camera and it's in slow motion and there's just no avoiding it. Yeah. These are
two very different men who don't look anything like Travolta Cage. But that's okay.
You knew you had to have stunt doubles for this kind of thing, right?
And so. Yeah, so then nothing. I think that was the state I wrote down
nothing quite like watching skiing and patent leather loafers. But you know, so now they're,
they're on the shore, I guess. And there's a harpoon gun.
Yeah. Conveniently nearby.
So nice of the world to just place that there. Exactly. And, and he uses
it in two different ways. Yes. Which is him, right? Yeah. It reminds me a
little of the Mitch Hedberg escalator joke. You know, it's like a harpoon gun
can never break. It can only become a bayonet. Like you could still stab
someone with. We apologize for the convenience, but it. Was a very
one sided ass whooping for a while. And then Nick Cage,
as whatever, just watched the movie.
So he ends up putting the harpoon through him and then. That's got to be
it. Well, but it's, it's, it's. So he stabs him first and then it's like
he goes to shoot. Cage goes to shoot Travolta with the harpoon gun and Travolta
is able to grab like the stem of the harpoon itself and the rope to
kind of keep it from going. And he has a sharp whatever piece of metal
or something and he starts cutting his face. Yes. Because he's basically like, you're always
going to look like me, you know, whatever. But he doesn't like slash across the
middle of the face or the nose. He goes around, he cuts along the exact
incision that it came. He gives the guide for the doctors to eventually
use to replace the face. It's really perfectly around the outside. Hey, if he hadn't
pre cut that face, we wouldn't have had time to save it and get it
on you. I'm glad he did that. So yeah. If he wanted to ruin it,
he should have done less than round the outside. Round the outside. Anyway,
so. Yeah. So Troi is finally dead. Finally actually dead,
it seems. Yes. And the other FBI arrives and they know who's.
Who's Archer? They know what Archer is. Yeah. Because Eve called Margaret Cho's character.
I can't remember her name now, but she called her and was like, you're not
gonna believe this, but you have to, like, understand what I'm saying. And I think,
you know, between the fact that it's Eve saying it, they all know Eve,
she's not gonna, like, say, this is not true. And she talks about the blood
type and all the different stuff, so they're convincing. So it's Buzz, the Mike Delfino
character, and then Margaret Shore, the last two of the crew that aren't dead.
Yeah. And so they're there, but they're referring to. They look at Nicolas Cage and
stuff, say, boss Sean. You know, they referred him. So they know what's going on.
So, like, that part's fine. We get to. They talk about
bringing in the best doctors to do the. Whatever kind of thing. We're going to
get you your face back, all that stuff. And, you know, we. I think at
that point we cut to. We see him briefly on the operating table next to,
you know, the bodies are next to each other again, we don't see the whole
thing again. The next thing. And he tells the doctor, too, before the surgery earlier,
when he got changed into Nick Cage, he said, well, I have a scar here,
which is the scar from when he got shot. The bullet went through and killed
his son. That's right. I want this scar back. So now he says, after all
this, he's like, hey, you know what? I feel like there's resolution in my life.
I don't want that scar back. Fuck my scar. Yeah, I don't need it.
I have a replacement kid instead. I don't need to remember what's his name
so bad. So we cut back to the Archer home,
and Eve is, whatever, sitting at the table or something, and she sees John Travolta's
silhouette walking past the. Which looked to me like one of those things was,
like, in that house, wouldn't that be like walking past the front, like, window through
the grass? Like, it didn't even look like the pathway to the house. But whatever,
he's walking by. She opens the door and he's there, and it's him. And of
course, no scarring on the face, no stitches, no nothing. He Looks
perfect. And Jamie, the daughter, turns around and runs towards him and she has
no nose ring and her hair looks normal and she doesn't have extra mascara.
She's all like, to normal. She's preppy. And so the very important that, you know,
she get back to being preppy. But then there's one more surprise for the family.
Isn't there one more fucking thing we got to do to make this movie bonkers
at the very end, which is he basically asks their permission if
we could adopt this little boy. Yeah. And it's Adam, because Sasha's dead,
Dietrich's dead, Caster's dead. Like every other person in this boy's life is dead.
So, you know, the Archers obviously are, you know, know, perfectly reasonable
in most ways. Foster parents, adoptive parents. Like, I wouldn't think
it's an issue. Sure. Except that they lost a boy who looks almost exactly like
this when he was five years old and have kept his room intact because he
even said when they had a fight the last time we talked, when he was
trying to convince him that he was even though he looked like Cage, that he
was Travolta, he told Eve, the last time we talked, we had a fight.
I slept in the bed in Mikey's old room, so that room's intact.
And so then he says to Jamie, why don't you show Adam his new room?
It just gives me the fucking chills. And the heebie jeebies. It's so gross.
Yeah. I mean, there needs to be some evaluation of this poor
kid and to see if the family is capable of actually treating him like his
own person instead of just freaking out calling him Michael the second they have a
couple glasses of wine. Yeah, we are maybe two weeks.
Okay. No, a little longer than that. There's been maybe a month since
the initial. Like, we got Caster Troy. Yeah, right. The idea that he
was even. That this was even going to be ending is less than a month
ago. Okay. And now it's, hey, would you
mind if we replaced your dead son slash brother? Is that okay with you guys?
It's just bizarre. It's absolutely bizarre. It's weird to couple with.
I don't want the scar. I feel like it should have been one or the
other. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Like, you don't want to. I want to
forget this kid forever and replace him. Hey, instead of the scar, can I get
a tattoo of Adam's name? Can I get a tattoo of Mark Davis? Michael or
Adam? Which one? No, Adam, the new kid. Forget Michael, I don't even want to
know what that is. Oh, my God. But that's how the movie ends. That's how
the movie ends, with this child trafficking, I guess. I don't know what the hell
to. Think of it, but if the good guys are doing it. Right, right,
right. Oh, my God. Face off, dude. Wow. Hey,
Steve. Well, that was. Hey, by the way, great fucking Cage
Vember. I mean, fantastic. Lots of fun. Yes. So how do we rate on our
final film of cagevember? I'll do, I'll do it. This was my pick, so I'll
do it first. Look, I, I, I love this movie, don't get me wrong,
but I did go into it thinking, oh, man, this is going to be like
a five out of five for me. This is going to be great. And it
didn't quite hit that point for me. Like, I think, you know, maybe it's in
the rewatching of a lot of movies we've done for the podcast. It's like,
maybe it's, like, twisted a little bit my expectations. Maybe just my memory of this
was better than, than I, than it ended up being. There are just so many
little plot holes. And I don't mean, like, obviously there's suspension of disbelief for the
entire premise, but there's other little stuff where it's like, whatever. And then the weirdness.
Some of the stuff with the characters that are clearly minors,
the stuff with Adam and replacing the boy and
all this weirdness, I don't love. However, this is still a fantastic
movie. It's still a fantastic John Woo movie, and it's still Nicolas Cage being unhinged
and wonderful. So I am a four out of five on Face Off. I feel
comfortable there. So basically, I like it about as equal to
Con Air, but not as much as the Rock, which I feel comfortable, comfortable with
my sort of comparing of Nicolas Cage action movies. So,
yeah, that's, I mean, I'm right in the same zone there. I think
this movie is super fun. It is kind of long for an action movie,
and maybe you could trim some stuff. But I enjoy most of the stuff.
I like the performances. I like the concept of it. Nick Cage like
the way that Jackie Chan enhances movies by doing his own stunts. Nick Cage's face
just does so much work to move this for me. And I was
going to give it a four, but I'm going to give it an extra half
just for the Cage bump. Right. If you put anyone in, even somebody good
in that role, you put Bruce Willis in there, you Put whatever. I think this
movie doesn't really work or it would be too serious for how ridiculous the other
is, you know. So I'm going to give this one a four and
a half out of five. And no, I'm not going to check this against previous
scores because I know my rating system is consistent. Makes sense.
All right, so my God, four and a half out of five. And that's it
for Cagevember. Yeah. Eight and a half out of ten from the two Dads on
Face Off. And that is the end of Cagevember. But don't worry listener. We have
another fun month long run we're gonna do for you. We are going
to open up the little windows of the dadvent calendar and
all December long we're doing Christmas movies.
And Nick, you get to pick the first one. How are we kicking off the
dadvent calendar? Okay, well, I think we're gonna go with something that's a little more
lightly crafted Christmas to kick off the dadvent calendar. But definitely something that we would
all consider a Christmas movie. One of the classics. One of the
most fun movies to watch this time of year. I think we're going back
to 1983. Okay. And we're going to experience the great
Eddie Murphy, the great Dan Aykroyd, some of our
other faves. We got Jamie Lee Curtis. We got Denholm. Elliot. Elliot again.
Yes. DH baby. We hardly. We missed you, buddy. And we
are gonna watch the film Trading Places. I love this movie.
Oh my God. Front to back, beginning to end. This movie is too much fun.
It absolutely is a Christmas movie. I agree with you there any move.
And actually I've had an argument with a friend that you know as well,
our friend Bart, about whether Trading Places is a Christmas movie. My contention has
always been that the, the when Lewis goes back to the
law firm and has to disguise himself as Santa and it's the only way way
he can be in there to do what he tries to do to get Billy,
you know, to try to frame Billy. We'll get into all this next week.
But like he. It has to be a party where he can dress up as
Santa and not be out of place. That alone means it's a Christmas movie.
The movie hat the plot doesn't work without Christmas. Absolutely. There you go.
Absolutely love it. So I can't wait to talk about this one next week.
All right, that about wraps it up. So if you like what you hear,
and we hope you do, please consider heading over to Apple or Spotify and leaving
us a five star review you. It really helps new folks find the show.
If you want to drop us a line, share your thoughts on an episode,
tell us what we got wrong, or suggest a movie we should do next,
you can do so attheshowdadson movie.com. that's the number two
and the number one. You can also follow us on Instagram @2dads1movie. Once again,
this has been Face off, another episode of 2 Dads 1 Movie. I'm Steve.
And I'm Nick. Thank you so much for listening. We'll catch you next week.