director
Michael Bay
screenwriters
David Weisberg
Douglas S. Cook
Mark Rosner
story by
David Weisberg
Douglas S. Cook
producers
Jerry Bruckheimer
Don Simpson
cinematographer
John Schwartzman
music
Nick Glennie-Smith
Harry Gregson-Williams
editor
Richard Francis-Bruce
cast
Sean Connery (John Patrick Mason)
Nicolas Cage (Dr. Stanley Goodspeed)
Ed Harris (Hummel)
John Spencer (Womack)
David Morse (Baxter)
William Forsythe (Paxton)
Michael Biehn (Anderson)
Vanessa Marcil (Carla)
John C. McGinley (Hendrix)
Tony Todd (Darrow)
Bokeem Woodbine (Crisp)
Claire Forlani (Jade Angelou)
Todd Louiso (Marvin Isherwood)
Anthony Clark (Paul the Barber)
Tom Towles (Alcatraz Park Ranger)
Jim Caviezel (Rear F-18 Pilot)
Xander Berkeley (Lab Technician)
Philip Baker Hall (Chief Justice)
Stuart Wilson (General Kramer)
mpaa rating: R
running
time: 136m
u.s.
release: 6/7/96
video
availability: VHS -
DVD
other michael
bay films
reviewed on this website:
- armageddon
- bad
boys II
- the
island
- pearl
harbor
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About The Rock, the
newest model off the summer assembly line, I have just one question:
Why Alcatraz? The plot -- concerning a terrorist's threat to
launch poisonous rockets at a major city -- could, in theory,
take place anywhere. But Alcatraz is a cool location and The
Rock (the nickname for the long-defunct prison) is a cool
title, so the terrorists set themselves up in Alcatraz. Makes
perfect sense. Hey, it's summer.
The terrorist in question is Ed Harris, a disgruntled Marine
furious at the government for their failure to honor the soldiers
who died under his command. Instead of going on 60 Minutes,
as some real-life military men with a similar complaint did recently,
Harris points four missiles loaded with VX gas at San Francisco
and demands reparations to the tune of $100 million.
So it's Sean Connery and Nicolas
Cage to the rescue. Cage, a chemical-explosives expert, and Connery,
the only man who has ever escaped from Alcatraz (well, him and
Clint Eastwood), infiltrate the Rock and try to disarm the missiles.
They also make sure to get into a gunfight every so often.
This is all entirely as synthetic as it sounds. Director Michael
Bay (who did last year's hit Bad Boys) is a graduate of
the MTV Mixmaster school of action filmmaking, which teaches
that rapid-fire, unscannable editing makes the carnage more exciting.
It doesn't, and much of the action feels thin and inauthentic.
Essentially, if you've seen the trailer for The Rock,
you've seen the movie.
What you don't see in the trailer are the performances of Connery
and Cage, who are both reasons enough to see almost anything.
Connery, also heard but not seen in the current Dragonheart,
has perfected his grizzled-old-lion schtick. No other actor can
match his wry authority. Yet he's also in something of a rut.
Connery hasn't been really surprising since his comic turn in
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. He's great at what
he does here, but he needs to try something else.
Cage, on the other hand, is
up for anything, whether it's munching a cockroach in Vampire's
Kiss (watch for the in-joke reference to it early in The
Rock) or drinking himself to death. In The Rock, Cage
has the guts to play a wimp -- a guy who's been in the rear with
the gear too long -- and he hits wild notes of fear and hysteria.
He's the sanest man on the screen, and maybe his honest performance
makes Sean Connery's testosterone look worse than the filmmakers
intended.
As for Alcatraz itself, I was surprised how little was really
done with it. It could be just any big building with catacombs
and bars. And the terrorists could be any terrorists. This was
the last production of Jerry Bruckheimer and the late Don Simpson,
and like most of their hits, it's thoroughly impersonal. The
Rock will likely make Nicolas Cage more bankable, but I can't
work up much enthusiasm for it. Its box-office glory will be
the latest triumph of low expectations and low standards.
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