“The Rock” (1996) might not be a good film in any objective sense of the term (although it was nominated for a Best Sound Oscar), but damn is it a fun one. This is one of those films, from the height of the tentpole era and director Michael Bay’s powers, that takes itself seriously at first glance yet steadily drops hints that you’re not supposed to take it seriously.
It’s filled with equal parts spectacular explosions and muscular one-liners as Nicolas Cage and Sean Connery wonderfully play off each other.
Over the top (in a good way)
This 2 hour, 16 minute film – which doesn’t seem so long once you catch its vibe – opens with Ed Harris’ General Hummel standing in the rain, professing to his wife’s grave (and the audience) that he’s been driven to his last straw.
“The Rock” (1996)
Director: Michael Bay
Writers: David Weisberg (story, screenplay), Douglas Cook (story, screenplay), Mark Rosner (screenplay)
Stars: Sean Connery, Nicolas Cage, Ed Harris
No one will listen to his pleas for soldiers killed on secret missions to be recognized by their country, so he’s going to embark on the desperate threat that becomes “The Rock’s” plot: He aims deadly gas-filled missiles at the Bay Area.
That’s a provocative theme – and original for a terrorist’s motives – yet it’s obvious that we’re never supposed to take this three-writer screenplay seriously.
“The Rock” soon finds government suits and soldiers – played by every middle-aged “Oh, it’s that guy” actor in Hollywood – cursing with every other word and looking dour as the camera pans in on them. They’ll say “I get up three times a night to take a piss” in the tension-building staff meetings, then “God have mercy on us all” when things gets serious in the control bunker.
A ridiculous romp
It’s a blast to watch Cage and Connery interact. Cage’s FBI biological-agent expert Stanley Goodspeed wants nothing to do with venturing to Alcatraz to take on Hummel’s mercenaries, but he has to man up.
Connery’s jailed-for-decades John Mason (who knows about the Roswell cover-up and who killed JFK) is happy to be stretching his legs again, but he’s a little rusty. It’s fun to watch them be flustered but overcome it in tense moments.
Those tense moments are of the ridiculous type that nonetheless make you smile. I don’t know what Michael Biehn’s Commander Anderson is trying to gain by aggressively yelling at Hummel in that shower-room standoff where Hummel’s men have the high ground. It ends with almost everyone dead.
The climactic internal standoff among the mercs is more organic – again, of course, ending with almost everyone dead. And with music by Hans Zimmer and Nick Glennie-Smith soaring behind it.
A 1996 time capsule
“The Rock” — like “Twister” and “Independence Day” — is wonderfully 1996. Back then, actors saw small roles in big movies as more important than a big role in a smaller movie or TV show.
As such, “The Rock’s” cast is hilariously, unnecessarily loaded. To wit: You have to go into the “uncredited” portion of IMDb before even getting to Xander Berkeley, Raymond Cruz and Philip Baker (“I get up three times a night to take a piss”) Hall.
Always looking grimy and great, “The Rock” influenced “24” in its plotting (although the latter’s plutonium rods ain’t got nothing on the globes of VX poison here) and earned Bay (“Bad Boys”) many more big picture deals, extending long after “a Michael Bay film” became a bug rather than a perk.
But it’s really stuck in the 1990s with the way women have no role other than as objects of affection (Mason’s daughter) or scared loved ones (Goodspeed’s wife), and how gay or effeminate men (Mason’s hairdresser) are amusing by their very nature.
On the other hand, swearing and explosions never get old. Nor does the US government screwing over its soldiers. But if I even wrote one paragraph delving into this issue that’s Hummel’s central concern, I’d be absurdly missing the point of “The Rock.” This movie is dumb – and delicious — action fun.