Face/Off Werb and Michael Colleary tried to sell to a studio from as early as 1990. The first actors who were chosen to play Sean Archer and Castor Troy were Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger respectively but John Woo instead hired John Travolta and Nicolas Cage to play those characters. It took numerous studios, producers and rewrites before John Woo became attached several years later. For the Archer character, Woo considered casting either Michael Douglas or Jean-Claude Van Damme with whom he had worked in "Hard Target". When the film was eventually made, Douglas served as an executive producer. Werb and
Angels with Dirty Faces End' kid story has already been told too many times". Cagney won two awards for Best Actor from the National Board of Review and the New York Film Critics Circle. "Angels with Dirty Faces" was nominated for three awards at the 11th Academy Awards ceremony: Best Actor (for Cagney), Best Director (for Curtiz), and Best Writing (for Brown). The review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports a 100 percent critical rating, based on 20 reviews collected retrospectively; all positive, with an average rating of 8 out of 10. In 2005, "Slant Magazine" praised "Angels with Dirty Faces" for being Warner's "best gangster