good lord

I ended up liking that a lot more than I thought I would and for reasons I didn't expect. I feel like I should be watching more John Woo films.

Every so often, a goofy action line or stunt sneaks into the film and it's a little jarring. Like, the movie is so emotionally fraught with human pain that it can't really sync with 90's action tropes. I would love to know what kind of studio meddling went into this.

oh shit the John Woo doves

It's impossible not to love all the emotional weight and fragile humanity each of the characters has. When it works well, you get these moments of high-intensity action sequences followed by intensely human pain, like when Cage-as-Travolta's brother dies and he ties his shoes one last time.

I love the space John Woo takes to show every character's emotional torment and the humanity they give up, but it's not always the best fit for a goofy 90's action movie. Like it's jarring to watch Nic Cage writhe in emotional agony and then use magnetic Zelda boots to escape prison next scene.

One of the best parts of 90's action movies was that nobody knew what computers could realistically do, so they were basically just magic machines.
Can they upload a virus to an alien spaceship? Absolutely. Can they make you sound like Nic Cage? Totally.

Oh shit, CCH Pounder as a hard-nosed government agent, let's fucking go.

John Travolta plays an FBI agent trying to balance his job and his fraying family. This used to be a much more common storyline in 90s films, I think. You don't often see heroes with families anymore--or if you do, they're totally shattered and out of the picture.