The Rock

4/4

Starring: Nicolas Cage, Sean Connery, Ed Harris, William Forsythe, John Spencer, Vanessa Marcil, David Morse

Rated R for Strong Violence, Language and a Sex Scene

In a statement that some may call heresy, I firmly believe that “The Rock” is the quintessential action/thriller of the past thirty years.  No other movie packs in as much action, excitement and suspense.  There’s so much stuff that action lovers want that it makes “Die Hard,” which is widely recognized as the king of the genre, look not only dated, but comatose.  And yes, I know it’s directed by Michael Bay.

The film opens on a grim note.  We see a military funeral taking place (no sign of Fred Phelps, thank God!), and we hear the frantic and desperate pleas for help by soldiers under attack.  General Francis X. Hummel (Harris in one of his best performances) tries vainly to get authorization to get them out from behind enemy lines, but to no avail.  “It has to stop,” he says at one point.

Hummel recruits a number of marines to steal 17 rockets filled with VX poison gas (“the most deadly substance known to man”) and take over Alcatraz Island, where he will threaten to launch them at the San Francisco Bay area unless compensation is offered to families of soldiers who died on secret missions.

Meanwhile, FBI Chemical Weapons Specialist Stanley Goodspeed (Cage) has just survived an attack on his office, and now his girlfriend announces that she is pregnant and wants to marry him.  His eventful day is about to get a lot more interesting when he is recruited to go to Alcatraz with a team of Navy SEALS to defuse the rockets.  But they need help getting in, so they have to recruit John Mason (Connery), a mysterious and dangerous spy who is the only person in history to have escaped Alcatraz and lived to tell the tale.

It’s a unique premise, to be sure, and for once the movie does not insult the intelligence of the average viewer.  The good guys are smart, but so are the bad guys.  These are no mere grunts; they are highly skilled in the art of war, and they have the upper hand.  The first scene where Hummel and his team get the rockets shows two things: the marines are not going to be easy foes for the heroes, and it shows how terrifying VX gas is (it’s not pretty).

The film’s biggest strength is not the peerless execution of the action scenes or the plot, but the well-developed and well-acted characters.  Although not necessarily three-dimensional (in this genre, that is often a detriment), we understand them and they’re sympathetic…even Hummel.  Hummel is not your average psychotic megalomaniac.  He’s an angry and desperate man whose cries for attention on behalf of those he served go ignored.  As played by Harris, he’s a man who believes that he has no choice, and the consequences of going through on his threat are just as terrible as doing nothing.

Our intrepid heroes, Stanley and Mason, are not nearly as deep, but both Cage and Connery really try (and succeed) in giving their characters personalities.  Too often, we see action stars reciting the lines, but they are too lazy or talentless to really try and create unique individuals with the material they are given.  Stanley is in over his head, and he knows it.  But he’s the only chance anyone has of solving the problem, so he has no choice.  Cage plays him with energy and passion, and includes a bit of his trademark off the wall personality to boot.  As Mason, Connery is terrific, playing the character as both mysterious and dangerous.  We never know if he can be trusted.  But his past is not nearly as dirty as some may say it is, and he has his own reasons for going on the mission (including his freedom and the life of his daughter, Jade (Claire Forlani)).

It should be noted that for an action movie, the script, penned by David Weisberg, Douglas S. Cook and Mark Rosner, is really a masterwork.  The characters and their relationships are well-defined and there’s plenty of action without any contrivances.  Still, a script needs a talented director, and say what you want about Michael Bay, but he knows what he is doing.  Bay goes on full throttle right from the get-go, and he never lets up.  Using a constantly moving camera and having his actor in constant motion, Bay pushes the adrenaline to its maximum level.  A case in point is the robbery, which is brilliant on a technical level.  Or the car chase between a Hummer and a Ferrari, which puts “Bullitt” to shame.

Bay also pulls no punches when it comes to violence.  This is a very violent film, sometimes brutally so.  No one is going to mistake this for a movie marketed to the “Transformers” crowd (although that would almost certainly be the case if it were made today).  But the film is all the better for it because it gives the film a bigger punch.

Michael Bay may be one of the most famous auteurs of the summer action movie, but his successes (entertainment-wise, at least) are inconsistent.  They range from the fantastic (“The Rock”) to the mediocre (“Bad Boys”) and the awful (“Transformers”).  It all depends on the script, and guidance from the real king of the summer action flick, Jerry Bruckheimer.

From the beginning of his career (which started with the aforementioned “Bad Boys”) up until it’s sequel eight years later, Bay worked solely with Bruckheimer.  After that, Bay’s films started to decline in quality (giving credence to the idea that the real talent behind Bay’s films is actually Bruckheimer).  Many consider Bruckheimer to be a master of schlock or, in one case, the end of intelligent entertainment.  I disagree.  The man known as Mr. Blockbuster knows exactly what the audience wants from an action movie, and if there’s a talent in Hollywood that should be encouraged, that’s it.  Are they super intelligent with complex characterizations?  No, but that’s not what people are looking for in a movie like this.  The want great action, likable leads and dastardly villains, and to be told an entertaining story.  That’s what Bruckheimer does, and to fault him for succeeding is absurd.

The film is pretty much flawless.  It does exactly what it sets out to do, and it does it with exceptional skill.  Exciting and action-packed to the point where it almost becomes operatic in one scene (credit goes to the score by Nick Glennie-Smith and Hans Zimmer, which is one of the best I’ve ever heard), “The Rock” remains a must-see for every action fan.