Face/Off

Face/Off (1997)

28 corrected entries

(17 votes)

Corrected entry: Castor said he burned all the people who knew about the surgery, but he didn't burn the surgeon. And at the end, the surgeon who switches their faces back is the same one. So why couldn't he just ask him to reveal the truth?

MikeH

Correction: It's not the same surgeon. The surgeon is behind Tito and Miller as the gasoline is poured on them. His picture is also in the newspaper Castor shows Archer in the prison as having died. Archer is also told after Castor dies that the FBI is bringing in a surgical team from Washington.

Greg Dwyer

Corrected entry: Castor Troy has the surgeon and other two witnesses killed in a fire to prevent anyone from knowing the identity between him and Archer had been switched. However, when the surgeon performed the operation, he had several assistants helping him, none of whom were killed in the fire. Which means other people knew about this.

mightymick

Correction: Just because we don't see them killed on screen, doesn't mean they weren't killed. Troy could easily have murdered them at their homes or killed them in another room at the medical center.

LorgSkyegon

Corrected entry: It makes no sense that Archer's wife takes a risky blood sample from Troy, when it would have been easier to simply take some from the real Archer, who enters the house bleeding.

Correction: It makes perfect sense. She's only got Archer's word on what Troy's bloodtype is, so taking a sample from him is hardly likely to convince her - he may have the same bloodtype as her husband, but so do millions of other people. However, she knows what Archer's bloodtype is, so, if she takes a sample from the man claiming to be her husband and it's not correct, then that's conclusive evidence that he's not who he says he is.

Tailkinker

Corrected entry: When Pollux admits to Castor (really Archer) the bomb is in the L.A. Convention Center, Castor gives Pollux a strange look and tells him he's so pathetic (as if he's turning on him). It seems those actions and that comment made Pollux immediately suspicious something was wrong. Castor should have just heard the location and said "Cool" or something like that, then changed the subject so nothing would seem wrong.

Correction: Pollux already found "Castor" suspicious and this evidenced by him asking him what his medication was and reminding him of why Dubov was so mad. It's pretty obvious that he either suspected that it wasn't really his brother or that he was acting more strange than usual.

Plus, he wasn't expecting the real Castor to arrive AS him and just thought that he would be getting out before Pollux could react to his comment. Pollux wasn't exactly stupid at this point and could've connected the dots pretty quickly.

Corrected entry: When Castor arrives to taunt Archer at the prison, he holds up his hand with the wedding ring on it. The hand we see in closeup is much hairier than John Travolta's hand.

Correction: That hand is not "much hairier" than Travolta's. John has an ample amount of dark hair on his hands and fingers and the close-up is consistent with that.

Super Grover

Corrected entry: At the beginning of the movie when Archer is with his son, the merry-go-round is going one way, then, in another shot it is going the opposite direction.

Correction: The carousel is running anticlockwise in every shot.

Super Grover

Corrected entry: When Archer (Castor Troy at the time) takes the cigarettes from the daughter's room, and goes to light one up, when he opens the pack, the end of the smokes is orange, yet after Archer takes a puff, the entire cigarette is white with no orange end.

Correction: When he takes the cigarette from Jamie's pack it is entirely white and stays that way.

Super Grover

Corrected entry: When Dubov is in prison and is about to be electrocuted, his boots are taken off and he is left with inner boots. After the shooting and killing, he scrambles on the floor and is barefoot when he throws the cot against the security guards, then he climbs up the stairs and has the inner boots on again.

Correction: First, Dubov is not about to be "electrocuted", he is in the prison clinic to receive electric shock treatment for misbehavior and second, he is actually barefoot when the scene opens. Third, it is Sean (as Castor Troy) whose magnetic boots are taken off, when he is dragged into the clinic and he is left with regular boots. Fourth, during the rest of this scene, Dubov remains barefoot and Sean (as Castor) wears the boots.

Super Grover

Corrected entry: When Archer is loaded into the ambulance beside Castor's body near the end of the film, he removes his wedding ring from Castor's hand, where it is obviously a firm neat fit. He puts it on his own finger and it is obviously very loose. Once you wear a correctly fitted wedding ring for several years (and no one wears a "loose" ring for any amount of time), your finger "adjusts" to it and it does not look loose (my own looks like my finger has developed a ring shaped depression in the skin). Unless he lost a decent amount of weight on his hands, that ring is a couple of sizes too big and should really have fitted him just as well, if not better, than it fitted Castor.

Correction: He did not lose weight. They had to trim him down so he'd look like Castor. That's why the ring doesn't fit.

Phixius

Corrected entry: At the end of the movie when Archer goes back home, his hair is the same length it was before his surgery. Since the healing process only takes a couple of days, how did they get his hair to grow back to its old length in a matter of days?

Correction: Probably in a similar fashion to how they got his wounds to heal, scarlessly, in an equally short amount of time. It's fictional technology.

Phixius

Corrected entry: So, they take Cage's face and put on Travolta. Now, they made a big deal about them not having the same blood type. Sure, the face is placed on a plastic mask, but it still needs blood supply. And if the blood types don't match, that's a no-go. Also, when Cage wakes up he smokes a cigarette. And we see the reflection of his face in a pair of glasses. He seems to have both eyelids and lips there, but shouldn't they be on Travolta? And finally.. They give Travolta liposuction to look like Cage who is a lot thinner. When they're turned back in the end, did they just inject all the body fat back in Travolta? Who'd be up for a reversed liposuction after having been skinny?

Correction: This procedure is fictional. All of the procedures ar never *fully* explained. As such, none of these mistakes can be counted. They happened because that's the way it works in the world of this film. As far as the eyelids and lips: There are muscles under the skin which were not removed. These are what were seen in the reflection.

Phixius

Corrected entry: When the faces are taken off they go straight into some kind of liquid. However the liquid does not go red in any way. Wouldn't the blood on the skin mix with the liquid?

Correction: There is no way of knowing what this liquid is or what it's properties may be. Perhaps it is meant to keep the blood from leaving the cells. At any rate, without this knowledge, this can't be counted as a mistake.

Phixius

Corrected entry: Near the beginning of the film, Castor is at the LA Convention Center setting the bomb. After the scene with the choir singing, there is a shot of the outside marquee that shows a choir convention running from the 18th - 21st. He then tells his boys to stay away from LA on the 18th because it's going to be a bit smoggy (the bomb). Later as Archer, after defusing the bomb, he is told that the targets for the bomb were some judges at a convention or something like that. The dates just don't add up - it was already the 18th when he initially set the bomb.

Packergirl

Correction: The choir was only a rehearsal, no audience was there, only a few people, who probably work there. So there are still plenty of days to pass till the 18th. No plot hole there.

Ronnie Bischof

Corrected entry: Near the end, when Archer is just about to turn back, he asks the doctor not to put the scar back. It was a top secret mission. Troy says the files and everyone who knew about it were destroyed. There is no way they would have know how to put him back together, let alone put the scar back.

Correction: Why would they need the files when Troy's body, which currently looks exactly like Archer's is supposed to, is in their possession?

Tailkinker

Corrected entry: The Director of the FBI dies, and his funeral is being attended by the new Acting Director of the FBI and probably other high-ranking officials. Still one of America's most wanted men, Castor Troy, just waltzes into this funeral, armed, and proceeds to start a firefight, with next to no security personnel to be seen. Unlikely.

Correction: Early on in the movie, Sean Archer is exasperated by the fact that his "covert antiterrorism team is so secret, that when we snap our fingers, NOTHING HAPPENS," so it's plausible that they tried to keep the funeral of its members secret. Also, Archer(as Castor) enters many hours after the funeral ends. What agent(s) would still be there?

Corrected entry: There is no way that the doctors would cut Archer's hair and apply cream and laser treatment to match Castor's during the operation. There is completely no point in them doing that and it is something that could have been done after the operation. The only possible reason they would have done it was to be able to work in the "The face itches" joke.

Spaceboy_007

Correction: Whether or not it was done deliberately to work in the "joke", the fact remains that in reality such an extreme operation is non-existent in the first place. Whatever procedures were followed before, during and after this mythical operation is up to the filmmakers.

Super Grover

Corrected entry: When Castor Troy (as Sean Archer) defuses the bomb at the L.A. Convention Center, the time stops at two seconds on the bomb's display. Immediately following this, there is a live newscast, and the reporter praises Sean Archer for diffusing the bomb with "one second left."

Correction: It's highly unlikely that the reporters would have been allowed to actually see the bomb in question - Troy presumably told them that there was only a second left. It's not as if he's going to care much about accuracy.

Tailkinker

Corrected entry: In the scene close to the beginning, when the airplane is taken over by Castor Troy, he opens the door and throws the woman out of the plane. The door is on the left side of the plane. When the plane then crashes though the hangar, we see the left side of the plane, and there is no door on the plane.

Correction: From the time when the aircraft leaves the runway until it comes to a stand in the hangar we see the left side of the aircraft 4 times. In the first time the aircraft is to fast, in the second time you can clearly see the doorseal, in the third time you can see the doorhandle on the golden stripes and in the fourth time when the jet bounces down for the last time you can see the doorseal as well.

Ronnie Bischof

Corrected entry: How it is that Castor Troy manages to come back to life again? He died from being blown into the wall by the jet engine, but somehow regains consciousness in the lab because his face was removed. Even if he did manage to 'wake up', why does he show no signs of being injured in any way? Surely a knock like that would break many bones, possibly even his back or neck.

Correction: It was made very clear that Castor Troy was not dead, he was in a coma. The chain link "wall" gave way which is why he survived the impact.

Corrected entry: In the final shoot out scene in the church at the end of the movie, Travolta shoots at Cage with a semi-automatic hand gun. However, the shots fired were from a fully automatic firearm.

Correction: The weapon used is a Glock 18 machine pistol, which features a fire-selector with both semi-auto and full-auto trigger groups.

Face/Off mistake picture

Visible crew/equipment: In the shoot 'em up scene at the hangar near the beginning of the film, right after Tito and Wanda take down Pollux, when Troy shoots an agent in the stomach and the agent flies back - you can see at least two cable wires pulling him backwards. You can first notice the 2 wires when the agent is running in slow motion right before he shoots him. (00:14:15)

More mistakes in Face/Off

Castor Troy: If you dress like Halloween, ghouls will try to get in your pants.

More quotes from Face/Off

Trivia: The prison that Pollux is in is called Erehwon which is "no where" backwards.

More trivia for Face/Off

Question: Why did Castor shoot Dietrich? They were on the same side.

MikeH

Chosen answer: Although they were on the same side, Troy is currently posing as Archer, which means he would have to do everything that the FBI would expect Archer to be doing. The whole point of the raid was to take out Archer, as well as Troy's gang. He would have rather risked killing part of his own gang than risk exposing his identity to anyone else.

Casual Person

That doesn't really make sense. In the scene, he goes out of his way to shoot him and smiles while doing so, carefully and slowly. Was not a collateral damage situation. The question is why he deliberately goes out of his way to kill him.

Answer: If you watch closely, he saw Archer, went out of his way not to shoot him, instead was aiming for his own son that he didn't know was his, to further traumatize Archer.

More questions & answers from Face/Off

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