Face/Off - Production

Production

Face/Off was a spec script which writers Mike Werb and Michael Colleary tried to sell to a studio from as early as 1990. It took numerous studios, producers and rewrites before John Woo became attached several years later. For the Archer character, John Woo considered casting either Michael Douglas or Jean-Claude Van Damme whom he had worked with in Hard Target. When the film was eventually made, Douglas served as an executive producer. Werb and Colleary have cited White Heat (1949) and Seconds (1966) as influences on the plot.

When John Woo was initially offered the chance to direct, he declined unless the studio agreed to give him more creative control than he had received on his previous American films. Travolta had previously starred in Woo's Broken Arrow (Cage was later to star in another Woo film, Windtalkers). Woo set the movie in the present so he could focus on the psychological elements of the story, such as how the feud between the two men affects those close to them — such as Sasha and Adam and Archer's family.

The names Castor and Pollux come from a pair of brothers in Greek mythology that make up the Gemini constellation. The story itself, most notably the hatred between Archer and Troy, is very similar to that of Hector and Achilles, who fought against each other in the Trojan War. Additional influences may have come from the fact that the Greek and Roman god of archery, Apollo, was closely related with the city of Troy. The Archer is also the symbol of the Sagittarius constellation, symbolizing the clash between the opposing Sagittarius and Gemini constellations.

Pollux is held at Erehwon, a prison so secret that even the inmates do not know its location. "Erehwon" is "nowhere" in reverse, an idea that also occurs in an allegorical novel by Samuel Butler.

The battle in the church, which includes doves flying around, is similar to the final confrontation in Woo's classic 1989 Hong Kong film The Killer.

Costing $80 million to make, Face/Off made heavy use of action set pieces including several violent shootouts and a boat chase while being filmed in the Los Angeles area. The boat scene at the end of the film was shot in San Diego.