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The Rock
The late Don Simpson, Jerry Bruckheimer, and Michael Bay cemented their skill at providing definitive action entertainment with the 1996 epic The Rock, a dazzling melange of blood and violence with some actual human characters at the center of it all that takes a little longer to wrap than necessary, but effortlessly keeps the viewer on the edge of their chair.
General Frances Hummel (Ed Harris), who did three tours in Vietnam, has been fighting for years to get reparations for the families of the soldiers he lost during the war. The death of his wife triggers a final act to get what he wants: He has gotten is hands on a deadly nerve gas that can destroy the city of San Francisco and then, along with a select crew behind him, takes over the legendary island prison Alcatraz with 81 tourists as hostages unless the IS government agree to pay the millions in reparations. The government decides to send a chemical weapons engineer named Stanley Goodspeed (Nicolas Cage) and a career burglar (the late Sean Connery), allegedly the only man to escape from Alcatraz, to put a stop to Hummel.
Simpson and Bruckheimer, the producer of other action classics like Top Gun and Beverly Hills Cop had all kinds of Hollywood juice by the time this project rolled around and put everything they had behind it, including another claimed action/adventure pro like Michael Bay in the director's chair. The skills of Simpson, Bruckheimer, and Bay manage t make the slightly cliched screenplay not as much of a hindrance to making this story viable entertainment.
What I did like about this story is the way the story initially sets up Hummel as a sympathetic character but doesn't take too long to establish him as the villain of the piece. On the other hand, the story is not subtle about constantly reminding us that Goodspeed is not a soldier, but putting him in the role of a soldier, though I loved his initial encounter with Connery that did climax with an incredible car chase, even though it might have taken up a little more screentime than necessary.
Bay's direction is grisly and imaginative, doing a wonderful job of showing the power of entities like fire and water. There was one eye-popping sequence where a bomb is set off in a tunnel and Cage and Connery have to dive underwater to avoid being blown up. We are equally blown away when we watch a soldier get impaled on a prison fence pole. Of course, it goes without saying that filming the story at the actual Alcatraz prison was a master stroke that gave the proceedings a very haunting quality.
With all the attention to production, it wasn't surprising that a lot of the performances were overripe, though I thought Connery and Harris were spectacular. Action lovers will definitely get what they're looking for here, thanks to the professionalism behind the camera.
The late Don Simpson, Jerry Bruckheimer, and Michael Bay cemented their skill at providing definitive action entertainment with the 1996 epic The Rock, a dazzling melange of blood and violence with some actual human characters at the center of it all that takes a little longer to wrap than necessary, but effortlessly keeps the viewer on the edge of their chair.
General Frances Hummel (Ed Harris), who did three tours in Vietnam, has been fighting for years to get reparations for the families of the soldiers he lost during the war. The death of his wife triggers a final act to get what he wants: He has gotten is hands on a deadly nerve gas that can destroy the city of San Francisco and then, along with a select crew behind him, takes over the legendary island prison Alcatraz with 81 tourists as hostages unless the IS government agree to pay the millions in reparations. The government decides to send a chemical weapons engineer named Stanley Goodspeed (Nicolas Cage) and a career burglar (the late Sean Connery), allegedly the only man to escape from Alcatraz, to put a stop to Hummel.
Simpson and Bruckheimer, the producer of other action classics like Top Gun and Beverly Hills Cop had all kinds of Hollywood juice by the time this project rolled around and put everything they had behind it, including another claimed action/adventure pro like Michael Bay in the director's chair. The skills of Simpson, Bruckheimer, and Bay manage t make the slightly cliched screenplay not as much of a hindrance to making this story viable entertainment.
What I did like about this story is the way the story initially sets up Hummel as a sympathetic character but doesn't take too long to establish him as the villain of the piece. On the other hand, the story is not subtle about constantly reminding us that Goodspeed is not a soldier, but putting him in the role of a soldier, though I loved his initial encounter with Connery that did climax with an incredible car chase, even though it might have taken up a little more screentime than necessary.
Bay's direction is grisly and imaginative, doing a wonderful job of showing the power of entities like fire and water. There was one eye-popping sequence where a bomb is set off in a tunnel and Cage and Connery have to dive underwater to avoid being blown up. We are equally blown away when we watch a soldier get impaled on a prison fence pole. Of course, it goes without saying that filming the story at the actual Alcatraz prison was a master stroke that gave the proceedings a very haunting quality.
With all the attention to production, it wasn't surprising that a lot of the performances were overripe, though I thought Connery and Harris were spectacular. Action lovers will definitely get what they're looking for here, thanks to the professionalism behind the camera.