The Rock

Home
Smell the Movies
Smell the TV

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Year:	1996
Country of origin:	USA
Director:	Michael Bay
Genre:	Head thumping action
Starring:	Nicolas Cage, Ed Harris, Sean Connery, Michael Biehn
Rating:	3/5
IMDB link:	http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117500/
Tagline:	Alcatraz. Only one man has ever broken out. Now five million lives depend on two men breaking in.
Favourite line:	"Why don't you throw in a trip to Tahiti while you're at it?"

Those that have been following the blog or the website for a while now will have noticed a tendency of mine to lambast all things Michael Bay. Be it the hideousness of the Transformers franchise, or his spectacularly annoying intention to remake any horror film of note from the late seventies, early eighties, his is a presence on this Earth I could well do without.
Then I get to The Rock, and I have reason to pause for....say it quietly....it is not utterly dreadful.
Whether that makes it any good, I am yet to be convinced.

The plot:
A troubled and rather angry soldier (Ed Harris) leads a platoon of fellow malcontents onto Alcatraz, the force in charge of enough corrosive nerve agent to render San Francisco's entire population a gibbering pool of semi-humanoid matter.
The US government see fit to send in a chemical weapons expert (Nic Cage) as well as a man imprisoned for crimes against the state and, as luck would have it, the only man ever to successfully break out of Alcatraz (Connery).
Can their combined intellect outwit those that seem to hold all the cards?
Will Cage demonstrate any degree of acting acumen?
And did Connery use the same techniques to make good his escape from Scotland?

All of Bay's trademarks are in place:
A massively prolonged run time, far in excess of what the plot actually deems necessary. Action sequences directed with so many camera's deployed that no amount of planning or logistics or, you know, directorial skill are required, you can just lop it all together in the editing suite later.
An overtly pompous score that is one half patriotic, one half bile inducing.
Grimly depressing caricatures of social minorities that border on the offensive: the gay hairdresser cutting Connery's hair is simply extraordinary to behold.
All that being said, something about this movie just about works. As skull-thumpingly dense as all of it is, I found it impossible to despise and, believe me, I tried.
I ascribe none of the movies enjoyability to Bay, mind you, more to a stroke of serendipity. Things can be good by chance, rather than by design.
I took a dump a few days ago that was shaped exactly like one of the heads on Easter Island. I didn't mean to create fine art, it happened entirely by chance and here, the same can be said of Michael 'F' Bay.