Shit, Actually

by Lindy West

  Now Cage face go on Travolta.

  They put a chip in his throat so now he has the voice of Nicolas Cage.

  Are you following this?

  Then Sean Archer wakes up and he just is Castor Troy! And he loves it! And he hates it! He screams in agony and he smashes the mirror. “Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you! When this is over, I want you to take this face and burn it!”

  There is no other movie where they do less to explain the science.

  It doesn’t seem possible, but the next phase of the plan is even stupider and worse. Now, I’m not in the Lady FBI, I didn’t graduate from QUEENtico, so what do I know, but it SEEMS LIKE if you need to get information from Pollux Troy, you could just have him in a room, like maybe the room where you interviewed him before, and then put Sean-Archer-as-Castor in the room also, and have them talk to each other? Are you actually worried that Pollux is going to see right through this insane fucking plan? I know that whenever my brother’s acting a little weird, my first assumption is that the FBI has taken his face…off and glued it to the skull of an FBI agent.

  (I mean, this would 100 percent be a concern in real life because in real life fake Castor would still have the wide, lumpen torso of John Travolta and a big, loose face like Vincent D’Onofrio in Men in Black, and, yes, Pollux would absolutely scream and scream at a skin-suit demon made from his brother’s mutilated body strolling into interrogation room 2 like, “How do you do, fellow brother?” But in this movie, IT’S JUST THE REAL NICOLAS CAGE. POLLUX WOULD BUY IT. I PROMISE.)

  Instead, and I’m getting reports that this is actually the only way, you could drop Sean Archer into a secret prison and not tell anybody about the fact that he took his face…off, not even the guards there, so he just has to fend for himself with the face and bangs of the most hated guy on earth inside of a lawless cage filled with murderers who hate that guy extra because he 69ed all of their sisters. This is way better than the two guys talking in a room idea!

  Sean is in prison now and a mean man in a little hat is yelling at him. “YOU ARE NOW A CITIZEN OF EREHWON PRISON, YOU BELONG TO NOWHERE.” Erehwon is nowhere backward, so kindly reanimate my corpse from where it lies in front of the Mirror of Erised and kill me again.

  It turns out, in EREHWON, all the prisoners have to wear giant metal knee-high boots because they make it very hard to walk and also, “This entire prison’s one big magnetic field. Your boots tell us where you are.” This is kind of the signature thing of the prison, and it’s pretty fucked up, but, silver lining—those inmates are stacked. They should do a THIGHS OF EREHWON calendar to raise money for more cattle prods!

  Sean gets bullied by a mean prisoner in the lunchroom, and at first he just lets the guy whale on him, but then he remembers to be Castor Troy and be good at fighting. To make sure everyone knows he’s Castor Troy and not an FBI agent with a face, bangs, chest hair, voice, and height transplant, he starts screaming, “I’M CASTOR TROY! I’M CASTOR TROY! WOOOOOOOOO!”

  That is what he’d say. He always said that.

  Meanwhile, back at the lab, the real Castor Troy wakes up without a face. (I’m sorry, they just left him there without a guard? The world’s most wanted supercriminal and freelance dickhead? Not even a night nurse or a drip sedative?) He touches his raw skull, confused for one second, and then is like, “Ohhhhhh, I see what they did.”

  You do???????????????????????????

  Castor phones his henchmen and has them kidnap the doc and bring him back to the lab.

  Doc: What do you want?

  I DON’T KNOW, DOC.

  DOES HE SEEM TO BE MISSING ANYTHING IMPORTANT?

  Back in prison, Sean is finally getting the goods from Pollux.

  Pollux: We’re gonna blow up LA, bro, it’s gonna be cool. [Not a good enough reason, IMO!]

  Sean: That bomb you built belongs in the Louvre.

  Pollux: Oh, well, I guess the LA Convention Center will have to do, giggle giggle.

  Oh, great! Now Sean can get out of here and save LA just in time! Oops, he has a visitor, so the guards take him to a metal room and lock his boots to the floor. Who’s it gonna be? Tito, I hope!

  OH, it’s only Castor Troy, wearing Sean’s face! And, bad news, he killed the doc. He killed Tito. He killed CCH Pounder. Now there’s nobody left who knows that they took their faces………….…OFF! Sean’s stuck in boot prison till death!

  Castor’s like, “I have got to go, I’ve got a government job to abuse and a lonely wife to fuck,” and, I’m sorry—did they change your dick too? Because I am over 70 percent sure that she will notice!

  Okay, now Castor Troy is just running WILD all over Sean Archer’s life, and aside from the part where he aggressively hits on Sean’s teenage daughter, which I cannot type about because I had to flush my brain down the toilet, it’s tough to find fault with any of it! Sean sucked, and Castor is fun, and what does he really do that’s so bad? He defuses his own bomb and becomes a national hero! He jokes around with his employees and is nice to them for once! He takes Sean’s wife on an actual date night (he made lobster, tiny artichokes, and spaghetti) and rocks her world in the sack! Okay, that is rape, actually, and I am moving it to the “bad” column. But everything else—pretty cool! What has the real Sean ever done that is actually helpful? Seriously?

  For some reason, they show the news on a giant screen at the prison, so Sean has to sit there all day and watch his greatest nemesis be way better at his life than he is. He has got to get out of there.

  Here’s his escape plan, which he appears to make up and execute on the fly: Sean asks a guard for a cigarette, then gets himself beat up and sent to shock therapy. They take your metal boots off when you get shock therapy, which he knew somehow, and the shock therapy protocol is that once a guy is done getting shocked they just throw him on the floor next to the shock therapy chair. So Sean gets in there, and they’re just finishing shocking the last guy—a guy who hates Castor because Castor had a “sex sandwich” with his wife and sister. Sean knows how to use the sex sandwich to his advantage because they teach you that in the FBI. As they’re strapping him into the chair, Sean says to the guy, “I didn’t fuck your wife, I didn’t fuck your sister, so let’s get out of here.”

  The guy, who one second ago was unconscious and twitching and foaming at the mouth, is healed by the holy knowledge that Castor Troy did not have a sex sandwich with his wife and sister. He hops up and clonks the guard! Now it’s a riot! Sean manages to turn off all the prisoners’ magnetic boots, and in the chaos, he escapes to the roof. But then, “NOOOO! NOOOOOO!” Turns out, EREHWON is actually EREHWEMOS, and that erehwemos is in the middle of the ocean! Sorry, man, you gotta jump in the wawa!

  Castor is at the cemetery visiting the grave of Sean’s son (booooooooring!), when Margaret Cho calls to tell him Castor Troy escaped from Erehwon. But don’t worry, she says, he definitely died jumping into the wawa.

  Castor freaks out and insists he has to see the dead body, and Margaret Cho is like, “Even if he is alive, he wouldn’t be stupid enough to come back to the city!” Ma’am, respectfully, who cares??? He is the world’s number-one worst terrorist! You absolutely need to take a couple of hours to find that bod and make sure he’s actually dead!

  Wait, no worries—Sean immediately calls Castor on the phone to taunt him and relinquish his one major advantage. “Well, if you’re Sean Archer, I guess I’m Castor Troy.”

  Now it is the time for Sean Archer and Castor Troy to face off at last. They took their faces…off, AND THEY FACE OFF. DO YOU GET IT? You know this pun was the entire pitch!

  Sean goes to Castor’s friend’s tacky casino loft for a party. He gets super high on pills and tells his crime team that he’s going to get Sean Archer.

  “I want to take his face…off.”

  “You want to take his face…off?”

  “Yes, I want to take his face….…off. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to use the little boys’ weewee room.”

  Meanwhile, whi
le Sean is using the little boys’ weewee room, Castor is over at Sean’s house doing some extreme parenting. He sees Danny Masterson (yikes) trying to rape Sean’s teen daughter, Jamie, in the driveway, so he fucking murders him! Heck yes! The old Sean would have cupped his balls probably!!

  Then he lectures Jamie on dressing sluttily (actually, he says, “Dress up like Halloween and ghouls will try to get in your pants,” but I assume that’s what he means?), and Jamie is like, “Someone tries to rape me and I’m to blame?” and he’s like, “Fair point, do you have protection?” and she’s like, “You mean like condoms?” and he’s like, “NO, LIKE A WIGGLY KNIFE.” And he gives her a wiggly knife.

  Back in the crime loft, Sean is having a sensual extramarital moment with Gina Gershon. “Gina Gershon,” he says, “I’m not the same person you remember.”

  Yeah, I know, you have a completely different body.

  Gershon decides this is the number-one hot moment to inform Castor (Sean) that he’s the father of her son, Adam, who unfortunately looks a lot like Sean’s real dead son. She’s like, “Adam, I want you to meet your father,” and the kid comes over and Sean, who is very high, has a complete meltdown about it. He grabs this kid and is just crying and screaming, “Michael? Michael? Michael?” Just then, the FBI shoots one million bullets into the building, killing everyone. (“Thank god!”—Adam, probably.)

  Sean grabs Adam to rescue him from the FBI (yeah, me, the guy they’re trying to shoot the most—let me carry the kid!) and hides him in a corner of the crime loft.

  Sean: Don’t be scared, okay?

  Adam: Okay.

  Yeah, I’m not scared now. This isn’t scary at all. I’ll just sit here and listen to my headphones while my mom and all her friends are massacred by the cops.

  Sean and Castor end up in a face-off on either side of a two-sided mirror.

  Castor: I don’t know what I hate wearing worse. Your face or your body. I mean, I enjoy boning your wife, but let’s face it—we both like it better the other way, yes? So why don’t we just trade back?

  Sean: You can’t give back what you’ve taken from me.

  Castor: Oh, well, plan B, let’s just kill each other.

  Then they each have to SHOOT THEIR OWN REFLECTION. Wow! It means something!

  Sean kills Pollux, which Castor hates. Now neither of them can give back what they’ve taken from them! Nobody escapes except for Sean, Gina Gershon, and Adam.

  Archer’s boss at the FBI, Victor (who is not enough of an FBI boss to be aware of the face/off scenario), is rightfully pissed that Sean got numerous FBI agents slaughtered for no reason and tries to take him off the anti-terrorism team. But since Sean is actually Castor, instead of saying sorry, he just murders Victor by surprising him real bad and then punching him in the chest so he has a heart attack.

  A desperate and injured Sean breaks into his own house so he can explain everything to his wife. From where she’s sitting, though, the terrorist who murdered her son is currently bleeding all over her bed. But don’t worry, Sean has prepared an explanation so she doesn’t freak out: “I’m Sean!” Good save!

  He tells her to test his blood against fake Sean’s. They might have identical dicks, but they have different blood types.

  Sean goes back to Gina Gershon and tenderly promises her, “Whatever happens, I promise Sean Archer is off your back for good.” Are you sure? She shot like twelve FBI agents in that last scene! Those were your friends!

  Next there is a signature John Woo slow-motion bird shot with seagulls, and then immediately after there is a signature John Woo slow-motion bird shot with pigeons! Now the seagulls and the pigeons are going to FACE/OFF.

  At last, it’s time for the final face/off in the church after Victor’s funeral. Everyone is pointing guns at everyone, and everyone shoots everyone, mostly. Gina Gershon clings to Sean and is like, “Take care of our boy, I love him so much, don’t let him grow up to be like us,” and then she dies. And Sean’s wife is jealous, like that’s her biggest problem right now??

  Jamie shows up, and she doesn’t know yet that her dad and his nemesis took their faces…off, so she shoots Sean Archer in the arm. Then Castor takes her hostage, but guess who remembered to bring her wiggly knife??? She stabs Castor in the leg, just like he taught her—truly the only real dad she ever had.

  Okay, now there’s a boat chase. A stuntman water-skis in his dress shoes while holding on to a chain attached to a speedboat. The boat crashes into the dock, and Archer and Troy both fly through the air and land on their feet on the shore. But it’s still not over! More punching! Sean spear-guns Castor in the leg. But he can’t spear-gun him to death because he still needs to take his FACE/OFF!

  Just to be a dick, Castor starts fucking up Sean’s face with a piece of glass so that he can’t have it back, so then Sean just kills him with the spear gun anyway. Hopefully, the FBI can decapitate him and get his severed head in a fridge, ASAP! The only doctor who knew how to do the face/off surgery is dead and all the equipment blew up, but I’m sure it’ll be fine!

  Sean takes his wedding ring back from Castor’s dead finger and goes home with his wife and daughter. Later that day, ding-dong! Who’s that? Oh, it’s just ADAM, THE ORPHANED SON OF THE TERRORIST I KILLED WITH A SPEAR GUN AT WORK THE OTHER DAY. “He needs a place to live.”

  The most unrealistic part of this whole movie is that Sean’s wife does not beat him to death.

  Face/Off is just Big Boy Freaky Friday.

  RATING: 6/10 DVDs of The Fugitive.

  Footnotes

  1 You lived alone in a castle with your sister for like ten years and you never talked to her????

  2 Okay, he is sometimes in a good mood, I guess, but if a person ever said “elementary” to me, I would stab them.

  Time Travel Doesn’t Make Sense and I Think We Should Make It Illegal

  Here we sit, grizzled and pandemic-worn, already five years beyond 2015—the dazzling, neon-lit vision that Doc Brown and Marty McFly drive to in Back to the Future Part II in search of [question mark?????]. With the gift of hindsight, this crossroads in real and cinematic time generates much hilarity, as it means that in 1989 (the year the film was made), Robert Zemeckis and Steven Spielberg were pretty sure that just twenty-five years in the future we’d have flying cars and bionic high-tops and robot Michael Jacksons would bring us all of our nanomilkshakes. What a coupla bozos! The coolest pieces of technology I have in 2020 are a windshield scraper with a mitten attached and a $400 flashlight that I’m told some people use as a “phone.”

  But let us examine.

  We open in a garage. It is 1985. Marty McFly, having just returned from going back to the future once, is caressing his Jeep in an unpleasantly erotic way when Elizabeth Shue shows up. Sensing Marty is in the mood, she’s all, “Shue-d we intercourse?” and he’s like, “Well, I kind of had a side thing going here with my Jeep, but I GUESS.” (Hey, quick aside: Maybe if Elizabeth Shue is in your movie, don’t name her character “Jennifer”? I already think that eleven out of ten blondes from the ’80s are Jennifer Jason Leigh, and this is not helping. I don’t come down to where you work and name David Niven’s character “White Flavor Flav”—GOOGLE DAVID NIVEN AND TELL ME I’M WRONG.)

  Marty’s acting a little weird, so Jennifer’s like, “Is everything all right?” Marty glances around furtively, catching a glimpse of the shadow-shrouded, reanimated corpse of Crispin Glover watching him from behind a screen door, as if to say, “I am in your house and I have your mom.” “Yeah, I’m great!” Marty lies.

  They’re just about to tongue face when VROOOOOOOM, out of nowhere, HERE COMES DOC BROWN WEARING PHYLLIS NEFLER’S FOURTH-BEST SILKEN BED CLOAK.

  “BLRRBLRRBRRBRRRRRBRBBBBBBRRR!” Doc explains, “MARTY! YOU GOTTA COME BACK WITH ME!”

  “Where?”

  “Back…to the FUTUBLLRRRRBRBRBRBRBRRRR!!”

  When Marty expresses concern at not having been able to tongue Jennifer, like, at all, Doc Brown says, fine, they can take h
er to the future too. Marty and Jennifer, you see, have to drive to the year 2015 to stop their horrible toilet children from going to prison and ruining everything. (Yo, just a thought, but I kind of feel like it might be time to let this genetic line peter out? Marty’s really the only borderline competent one out of three generations. Pick your battles.)

  When they get to 2015, Jennifer is like, “Why am I in this flying garbage car?” and Marty goes, “Uhhh, Jennifer, ummm, I don’t know how to tell you this, but you’re in a time machine.” So then, of course (WOMAN) literally the only thing Jennifer can think of to do when confronted with the fucking miracle of time travel is to babble incessantly about her wedding. Doc Brown is like, “WHO IS THIS TERRIBLE PERFUMED YAPPER I THOUGHT THIS WAS A BOY MOVIE,” and immediately blasts her in the face with a shut-up ray. “She was asking too many questions,” he tells Marty. “No one should know too much about their future.” Also, I thought dragging a lifeless corpse around would really speed up our important mission.

  Not to worry, though, because then Doc and Marty literally throw Jennifer in the garbage.

  It’s raining outside, and Marty is like, “Ew,” but then Doc is like, “Hold up—just wait five seconds and it’ll change, because I have the rain memorized in the future for reasons unexplained.” Doc gives Marty some electric shoes and this terrible future-jacket, and tells him to go to a nearby diner and pretend to be his own son and then a man named Griff will come in and ask him a question. “Say no, NO MATTER WHAT.” If Marty fails to say no, no matter what, “this one event starts a chain reaction that completely destroys your entire family.” Yo, is this really a situation that justifies the use of a technology as fraught and risky as time travel? One family has kind of a crappy time for a few years? That’s your emergency? Reminder: Marty and Doc go on to fuck up this “mission” so egregiously that they endanger the fabric of time and space itself. Cool. Worth it.