FBI Special Agent Sean Archer and his son Michael
are on a father-son date riding a carousel. On a
hill overlooking the carousel is a sniper named
Castor, setting up his rifle to assassinate
the FBI Agent. The man is an internationally
wanted terrorist, responsible for hundreds of
deaths and acts of violence. He waits some
seconds to get a clean shot before firing.
Archer is hit in the back and falls off the ride
alongside his son. The bullet seems to have gone
through his body and struck the innocent
kid in the head. With tears in his eyes,
the devastated father crawls to his son while even
Castor is stunned that he just killed a child.
The scene cuts to six years later. Archer has been
mourning his son’s death and looking
for Castor for the past six years.
His madness to catch his son’s killer has
affected his life in many ways. Currently,
he is annoyed at his fellow agents for failing to
retrieve information on Castor’s latest missions.
Somewhere else, Castor is posing
as a minister to sneak into the Los
Angeles Convention Center. He hides in the
back to assemble an explosive called Sinclair.
Meanwhile, at the FBI office, Archer is informed
that Castor’s brother Pollux has just chartered
a jet at a local airfield. Knowing that
Pollux always flies with his brother,
Archer immediately orders an undercover agent
to be planted on the plane. At the same time,
his wife calls him but Archer ignores it, driven
by his stubborn wish to put his work above all.
Pollux is at a local airfield with his close
friends Leo and Lars. After waiting impatiently
for a while, they are relieved when Castor
arrives. The brothers then board the plane
and are greeted by Winters, an undercover agent.
She does her job and informs the police,
affirming that the terrorist is onboard.
Soon after, multiple police cars and
a helicopter approach the runway.
Castor isn’t surprised to see Archer and
his fellow agent Tito chasing the airplane.
To stop the terrorist from retaliating, Winters
points her gun at Castor but is, in turn, attacked
and knocked out by Pollux. An angered Caster
kills Winters in front of his rival, mocking him
in the process. In return, Archer jumps into
the helicopter and rams it to the airplane.
Castor sees things going down and kills the
pilot to take control of the plane. Still,
take-off is impossible, so the brothers
resort to firing at the police openly.
In the following brawl, Pollux is captured but
Castor ignores his brother’s pleas and runs
to save his own life. He then hides in a nearby
bunker, while the police split up to look for him.
A while later, he comes face to face with
his biggest enemy giving rise to another
shootout. Castor tries mocking him but is
in turn, kicked into the backdraft of a
turbine. He flies backward, falling unconscious
because of the impact, and is assumed dead.
In the following scene, Archer returns
home to his wife Eve and daughter Jamie.
Their family is far from ideal because Archer
has been too busy at work to be there for them.
The next day, Archer is presented
with Pollux’s disc which contains
information about their next mission. An
animated woman comes up on the screen,
saying how she is going to blow everyone away.
On looking at the Schematics of “Sinclaire”,
Archer registers that it is a biological weapon,
one that will end much of LA, killing thousands.
The only way to get more info on
the explosive is through Pollux
but he would only talk to his dead brother.
While thinking of a way to get him to talk,
Archer’s colleague Miller takes him to a
private medical institution. There, Archer
is met with a massive surprise as he sees Castor
in a medically induced coma and on life support.
Miller puts out her cigarette on Castor’s skin,
proving that he is fully captured. She and the
institute’s director Dr. Walsh want Archer
to take Castor’s face and voice, then go into
Erewhon Prison to extract information from Pollux.
The surgery will be difficult but 100% effective.
The doctor explains that the surgery is not
entirely permanent. Archer’s height is easy
to correct, his skin and eye color are also
close enough to Castor’s to be a reasonable
match. Laser shears will help turn his hair more
like Castor’s and an abdominoplasty would be
done to rebuild Archer’s body to resemble the
terrorist. The most important device for the
procedure is a morphogenetic template that
has an exterior resembling Castor’s face.
Archer finds the plan nonsensical and
starts to leave, while Miller tries to
convince him otherwise. At last, he
decides to try interrogating known
associates of Castor’s before
going forward with this plan.
In the following scene, Archer is
seen torturing Castor’s associates
until they are on the brink
of death but they do not talk.
He also meets up with Castor’s girlfriend
Sasha but she hasn’t met him for two years.
Even her brother Dietrich, who works as
Castor’s supplier is interrogated to no avail.
Archer decides to go through with the surgery
but wants to talk to director Lazarro and his
wife before he makes a decision. However, he
is not allowed to do so because the mission is
classified and off-the-books which means no one
else other than Archer and the two are allowed
to know of it until it is completed. Archer
gives it a thought and agrees in the end.
Then, we see him wishing farewell to his
family before going in for the surgery.
Castor’s face is put on top of Archer’s exposed
muscles and connected which ends
the final procedure of the surgery.
A few days later, Castor is on a hospital bed with
his head completely wrapped. Meanwhile, Archer’s
bandages are unwrapped and he sees himself as the
person he hates the most. Initially, he panics,
showing a deep hatred for himself because of his
face but Tito and Miller calm him down quickly.
They soon place a microchip in Archer’s
larynx which changes his voice entirely.
He has six days until the bomb goes
off to get information from Pollux.
Then, Archer is let into the Erehwon Prison
where he gets two days to get Pollux to talk.
The prison warden Walton welcomes him in,
calling him the property of the prison. His
feet are then clamped tight in magnetic boots
which allows the guards to monitor his location.
After being let into the cafeteria,
Archer turns around to talk to
Pollux when another inmate named Ivan
attacks him. He wants revenge on Castor
ever since he slept with his wife and sister
at the same time. At the end of the fight,
Archer’s magnetic boots are clamped to the EM
field and the warden holds him back with a gun.
Meanwhile, at the Walsh Institute, the real
Castor’s heart rate begins accelerating.
He miraculously stands upright and soon realizes
his face muscles are exposed to their entirety.
The excruciating pain soon hits him but he
still manages to call Lars and Leo for help.
The duo comes to his aid in an instant and
sets him free, using Dr. Walsh as bait. By now,
Castor has watched an entire documentary video
on the surgery and knows that it can be reversed.
Back in the prison, Archer gains Pollux’s trust
and successfully manages to extract information
about the bomb. He is eager to talk to his
associates but to his surprise, the next person
to visit him is Castor himself. He is in Archer’s
face, having threatened the doctor to perform the
surgery. The plan has backfired and turned into a
huge disaster, mostly because the mission is off
the records and if a select number of people
died, Archer could lose his identity forever.
Castor reveals that he has killed Dr. Walter
and destroyed any evidence that could be used
to prove who he is. An enraged Archer attacks
him before the guards rush in to stop him.
In the following scene, Castor meets Eve. They
talk for a while before she leaves
for work as he stares at her behind.
Then, he settles into Archer’s home and
reads Eve’s diary, finding out that she
and Archer haven’t made love in two months.
He also discovers Jamie smoking in her room
and asks her for her hidden stash. Jamie calls
him out for his strange behavior before he leaves.
Castor makes a deal with his own brother
and gets him out of the jail as a ruse.
When alone without any cameras on them, he reveals
his true identity and tells his brother to reveal
everything he knows to the police. The explosion
is less important to Castor than making Archer’s
life hell, so he wants to be named a hero
for debunking where the explosive is kept.
As he had planned, he and a bomb squad
rush to the convention center. However,
the explosive is protected by a pin
which will take hours to bypass.
In a dramatic climax, Castor puts the correct
pin and stops the explosion in the end second.
He is praised by the media and
the news soon reaches Archer.
He feels suffocated, unable to
do anything to save his family
and reputation. In a desperate attempt to
flee, he decides to break out of prison.
He finds out that he can get his boots
taken off if he is given shock treatment.
He starts a fight with a guard and
is taken to the clinic in the back.
On his way, he meets Ivan and gets him on
his side by claiming he didn’t sleep with
anyone from his family. Ivan helps Archer by
attacking the guards and asking him to run.
A shootout ensues, causing Ivan to kill the guards
in the control room. Archer sits down at the
computer and overloads the security system. Just
when they think they have won, the warden kills
Ivan. He wants to do the same to Castor but is
surrounded by other inmates who beat him to death.
Archer wants to run away before he
realizes that the prison is an oil platform
in the Ocean. Before he can think
of a way out, a helicopter appears,
making him jump off the platform into the ocean.
When he doesn’t surface, he is assumed dead.
Castor is told about the incident but he registers
that Archer is probably alive and looking for him.
In the next scene, we see Archer ending up at the
shore. He calls Eve but she doesn’t recognize him.
He gives it a thought before deciding to drive to
the penthouse where Castor’s explosive supplier
Dietrich lives. He is welcomed to a lively party
of young people who think he is their companion.
Somewhere else, Castor sees Jamie’s boyfriend
dropping her off in front of the house. The guy
tries to force himself on her, angering Castor.
He beats him up before sending him away and having
a long conversation with Jamie. She trusts this
version of her father more than his original self.
Castor sees that she hasn’t gotten over her
brother’s death yet and blames her father for
everything. He hands her a knife, teaching
her how to use it, in case she is attacked.
Back at Dietrich’s penthouse, Archer wakes up
to Castor’s girlfriend Sasha making advances
at him. He freaks out and tries to send
her away, all while Pollux watches them
from a roof across the street. He calls
Castor to tell him about the incident.
Meanwhile, Archer finds out
that Sasha and Castor have a son
named Adam who Castor never acknowledged.
She is just a poor girl trying to make a
living for her child so he could avoid
a criminal life. Archer sees his son
in Adam and hugs him, accidentally blurting
his real son’s name in the process.
On knowing Archer’s whereabouts, Castor
sends an FBI SWAT team to the penthouse.
They fire a grenade launcher, starting
a shootout between the two parties.
Archer’s priority is to save Sasha and
Adam so he makes the kid wear a headset,
muffling the noise of the gunshots.
The shootout continues resulting in several losses
of life from both parties. A while later, Archer,
Sasha, Adam, and Dietrich find each other. Castor
discovers them and aims his gun at Archer. His
girlfriend, son, and friend do not recognize him
with his face but he doesn’t seem to care at all.
He fires at Sasha when she tries to move
but Dietrich takes the bullet and dies.
Archer sees Castor running and follows
behind while firing several rounds at him.
They stop for a second when Archer offers
to exchange faces again but Castor refuses.
Archer is the first to be hit by a bullet. The
two continue to exchange fire until an FBI agent
named Loomis arrives. He makes Archer run up
the stairway and sends Castor diving for cover.
Pollux and Archer face each other
on the roof and prepare to fight.
In the end, Pollux falls down and dies.
Castor sees his brother’s dead body
and breaks into tears. He loses his
cool and shoots Loomis in the face.
The next morning, Castor returns to his office
depressed by his brother’s death. The director
Lazarro comes in to critique him for causing many
unnecessary deaths yesterday. Not caring about
the cover anymore, Castor tells Lazarro his true
identity, then knocks him to the ground. He also
punches him in the heart and stops it, pretending
that he just suffered a fatal heart attack.
At the same time, Archer breaks into
his own house and meets Eve. He calms
her down before telling her everything
that happened to him in the past month.
Eve does not believe him but he asks her to check
Castor’s blood type which is different from his.
At night, Eve draws some of Castor’s blood and
drives over to the hospital. She soon comes
face to face with the truth when the blood
results match what Archer told her earlier.
Just then, Archer comes into the
room. Eve draws a revolver on him
but once he tells her the story of how they
had their first kiss, she realizes the truth.
Suddenly, Castor arrives with Leo and
Lars, looking for Archer, having found
out that Eve knows the truth. Eve quickly
pretends to be attending to a burn patient
and makes up a story about being on-call
for the night. Castor accepts her story
and sends his men away but once alone,
we find out that he knows Eve is lying.
The next day, Sasha and Archer go to Lazarro’s
funeral, where Castor is holding Eve and
Jamie hostage. Sasha hands Archer a gun,
siding him to avenge her brother’s death.
A gunfight ensues and all of Castor’s
minions are killed, including Sasha.
Castor and Archer engage in a battle when Jamie
finds a gun and shoots at Archer, believing him
to be the real Castor. She soon realizes her
mistake when Castor takes her as his hostage and
licks her face. He then makes his escape and
ends up on a boat while being followed by Archer.
After a lengthy chase, both Archer and Castor’s
boats are destroyed. In a final showdown,
Archer kills Castor with a
spear gun. With his last breath,
the terrorist destroys his own face
to prevent Archer from reclaiming it.
When everything calms down, Eve explains
the situation to the FBI and convinces
them of Archer’s true identity. Archer goes
through surgery and his face is restored.
In the final scene, Archer brings Sasha’s son Adam
into the family and raises him as his own son.
