"Face/Off" John Woo's masterpiece action that shakes the emotions to the extreme

From a Hong Kong genius to a Hollywood genius

The setting in which male enemies swap faces and fight in that state is science fiction-like. In fact, the original script was set 200 years in the future. The script was written by Mike Wirbe and Michael Colliery. In 1991, when they were studying film at UCLA, they were inspired to write this scenario after watching `` Incandescent '' (1949) starring James Cagney.

The studio that bought the rights to the movie originally wanted to make it into a movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone, but time passed without it happening. In 1994, Rob Cohen, who would go on to make `` Fast and Furious '' (2001), attempted to make it into a movie, but gave up. Johnny Depp briefly expressed interest in the role of Archer, but he also declined and the project was shelved.

“Face/Off” (c)Photofest / Getty Images

Meanwhile, Wu entered Hollywood in 1993 with " Hard Target, " starring Jean-Claude Van Damme. In his next film, `` Broken Arrow '' (1996), he suffered from the studio-led production structure and was unable to make the movie as he wanted. If you want to film what you want in Hollywood, you need political power to gain the freedom to produce it. Fortunately, Broken Arrow was a hit in America, grossing over $100 million, and Wu's stock rose.

Stars have a lot of say in Hollywood blockbusters, and in this movie they had a strong ally in John Travolta. It was around this time that Wu came across the script for ``Face/Off.''

At first it was a strange science fiction movie!?