The Rock
“The Rock” really is an inspired idea for an action movie. In the parlance of ’90s movie pundits (who always had to compare action movies in that decade to the 1988 classic), it’s essentially “‘Die Hard’ on Alcatraz.” Add the hyperkinetic aesthetics of producers Don Simpson (who died shortly before the movie was released) and Jerry Bruckheimer, peerless technical qualities, and an overqualified cast that includes two Oscar winners and an Oscar nominee, and it’s a recipe for excitement and thrills, two things “The Rock” has in spades. Don’t worry– I didn’t mention director Michael Bay for a reason.
At the point he made “The Rock,” Michael Bay was best known as a skilled music video and commercial director who only had one feature, the 1995 Simpson/Bruckheimer thriller “Bad Boys,” which showed some visual imagination and a perfunctory ability to tell a story with humor. Under Bruckheimer’s watchful eye, Bay continued to develop his brand of storytelling in films such as “Armageddon,” “Pearl Harbor,” and “Bad Boys II.” Whether that brand is appealing to you is a matter of taste, the story being told, and how overboard Bay decides to go. For my money, Bay’s first two films for Bruckheimer (made when Simpson was still alive) are his best, as they tell the most coherent, fluid stories while also fulfilling the requirements of a contemporary action movie. After “Bad Boys II,” he began a working relationship with Steven Spielberg on 2005’s “The Island” (another winner for me) before becoming the author of the “Transformers” franchise and last year’s “Pain & Gain.” The low-budget (by Bay standards) “Pain & Gain” was the closest thing we’ve gotten to a “personal film” out of Bay, and even if it didn’t really work for me, the fact that he got Paramount to sign off on it because of the success of the “Transformers” says a lot about the goodwill (and yes, money) he’s made for studios and producers over the years. He’s a polarizing figure in modern cinema, and he’s made some enemies over the years (including this film’s co-star and executive producer, Sean Connery), but you know what? When he’s got the material, few people are capable of what he is.
“The Rock” is the finest example of that, with probably the first and third “Transformers” films right behind it. The most important part of the film’s success is how grounded it is morally. The “bad guy” in the film, Gen. Frank Hummel (Ed Harris), is less a traditional Bruckheimer villain but an honorable man who’s seen good people die under his command during black ops missions only to not get the recognition they deserve at home. After years of being a good soldier, Harris will not stand by anymore. He gets 14 like-minded soldiers, including his long-time second-in-command (played by David Morse), to liberate some missiles with VX nerve gas before setting up camp on Alcatraz, taking 81 tourist hostages in the process. He wants $100 million, most of which will go to his fallen comrade’s families, or the rockets get launched. Hummel sees this as an act of patriotism, but needless to say, the government sees it otherwise. Their “ideal” response would be a missile strike with a napalm-like substance, but it’s not ready because, you know, of course not. Instead, they send in a Seal team with an FBI chemical weapons specialist (Stanley Goodspeed, played by Nicolas Cage) and a political prisoner who once escaped from Alcatraz (John Mason, played by Connery). With the exception of the Seals, it’s not an good situation, but after the Seal team is killed, it’s just Stanley and John. After an awkward introduction that includes a car chase through San Francisco, Mason and Goodspeed turn into a team to be reckoned with. I’ll let you guess whether they save the day or not.
The screenplay by David Weisberg, Douglas S. Cook, and Mark Rosner (with a lot of uncredited rewrites) is a pastiche of cliches and absurdities as crazy as anything either Bay or Bruckheimer have worked with, but it’s got a strong ethos and emotional core that comes from the personalities of the cast. You couldn’t ask for a trio of more different actors than Connery, Cage, and Harris, but all three are talented enough to elevate the material to make their characters their own. This is especially true of Connery and Cage, who are ridiculously good playing off of one another, with Connery having fun riffing his Bond image, and Cage (in his first action hit) turns Goodspeed into a cocky, quirky Beatles fan who finds himself in over his head, but manages to come through in the clutch, a lot like he does in the lab. It helps that Mason and Goodspeed are given motivations to succeed in the form of Jade (Mason’s daughter, played by Claire Forlani) and Carla (Goodspeed’s pregnant fiancee, played by Vanessa Marcil), even if they’re treated as plot devices after our initial meetings with them. But these characters are believable at going toe-to-toe with Harris’s Hummel in terms of strategy and determination, and easy to root for because both of them are treated as real underdogs in a situation envious to neither of them.
In the end, though, the real stars of “The Rock” are the Simpson/Bruckheimer formula and Michael Bay, whose quick cut style fits perfectly with the technical prowess the producing team put together for each film, a tradition Bruckheimer has continued solo. The production design by Michael White when the film is on Alcatraz deserves a mention, because it truly makes “the Rock” seem like a labyrinth of mazes no one could possibly escape, and it’s shot flawlessly by John Schwartzman, who is up to the challenge of Bay’s quick-moving camera. Yeah, there are parts that fit the “over-edited” category, but Richard Francis-Bruce (an Oscar nominee) and composers Hans Zimmer and Nick Glennie-Smith keep the action moving with a fluid sense of storytelling purpose that isn’t always evident in Bay’s (or Bruckheimer’s) movies. “The Rock” is an exception to a lot of rules, though, not just in terms of the filmmaker’s involved, but the action genre in general.
