The Rock

Happy New Year my online readers. This month will be exciting, since I’ll be borrowing a page from The Nostalgia Critic, and will be dedicating this month to an actor that has become his own stereotype, Nicolas Cage. What can be said about this man? I pretty much like to say that actors are split up into these categories: good actors, bad actors, and Nicolas Cage. I guess he can be placed in his own category, seeing how I cannot decide if he’s a good or bad actor, but can act over-the-top, if you know what I mean. To start off this month, we will be looking at one of the best action movies ever made, “The Rock,” released in 1996.

Steve Rhodes started his review by saying, “As in EXECUTIVE DECISION, we have another movie where part of the entire country may die, but the President is basically AWOL and his aides and the military brass handle all the decisions. This film is called THE ROCK and rather than wipe out a mass of humanity with nuclear weapons, this time it is chemical weapons so lethal than a teaspoon in the air kills everyone in an eight block radius. To get large audiences these days you must threaten the lives of hundreds of thousands, a couple of dozen I guess is considered passe.”

In this perfectly casted movie we have the amazing Ed Harris playing the antagonist, U.S. Brigadier General Francis Xavier Hummel. Obviously, our government is the one to blame and not him. He perfectly sums it up by saying, “The men in military special ops are selected to carry out illegal operations throughout the world. When they don’t come home, their families are told fairy tales about what happened and denied compensation. All my career I’ve choked on these lines. Well, here and now the lies stop.” In another part he quotes Thomas Jefferson when modifying his behavior by stating, “The tree of liberty from time to time must be watered by the blood of patriots.”

General Hummel makes so many U.S. soldiers become mercenaries. They massacre so many people safeguarding the chemical weapons called V.X. nerve gas. Once they get their hands on it, they take over Alcatraz. While kidnapping 81 prisoners there, they set up four rockets to fire V.X. over San Francisco unless they’re given $100,000,000 in 40 hours. Rhodes compared, “Like Robin Hood, they are only going to keep part of loot and give the rest to the relatives of soldiers who have died in other covert missions.”

The best of the movie is Nicolas Cage as Dr. Stanley Goodspeed, a chemical and biological weapons expert, and Sean Connery as John Patrick Mason, a former Special Air Service captain who once escaped from The Rock. Mason was in the British secret service, but did something that made the U.S. government to imprison him on a life sentence in complete isolation. The only problem is that he is an escape specialist and keeps escaping from the prisons he is put behind bars. They let him out of prison so he can help them break into The Rock with a Special Forces team.

Before Goodspeed and Mason go to The Rock to rescue the prisoners, they have this really long car chase across the streets of San Francisco. Rhodes notes, “In this highly derivative film the writers try for a small twist by having it be a yellow Ferrari chasing a Hummer. Among other over the top special effects we have a cable car blown straight in the air and fly over head. The director (Michael Bay) looks like he had too much money and wanted to spend it all. As I was having fun, I kept thinking of all of the great films made with small budgets that have something to say and yet it is these, admittedly enjoyable, escapist entertainment pictures that bring out the crowds.”

The script by Douglas S. Cook, John Hensleigh and David Weisberg is ridiculous and excessively dramatic, but hysterical. Usually the humor is an exchange between a tired Goodspeed and Mason during one of the action scenes. Goodspeed asks, “You enjoying this?” Mason smiles and says, “Well it’s certainly more enjoyable than my average day…reading philosophy, avoiding gang rape in the washroom…though, it’s less of a problem these days.” When they finally arrive at Alcatraz, Mason starts whining about his days in prison. This annoys Goodspeed who responds, “You know, I like history too, and maybe when this is all over you and I can stop by the souvenir shop together but right now I just... I just wanna find some rockets!” Finally, Mason explains his qualifications with, “I have a unique knowledge of this prison facility. I was formerly a guest here.”

Other than the excellent acting from our three main leads, there are about a handful of good actors in minor roles, including, but not reduced to, Commander Anderson (Michael Biehn), Eddie Paxton (William Forsythe), Major Tom Baxter (David Morse), FBI Director Womack (John Spencer), Captain Hendrix (John C. McGinley), Captain Darrow (Tony Todd), Sergeant Crisp (Bokeem Woodbine), Special Agent Shepard (Danny Nucci) and Captain Frye (Gregory Sporleder).

Rhodes noted, “The editing (Richard Francis-Bruce) is too choppy in the beginning, but the cinematography (John Schwartzman) is striking throughout. The San Francisco scenes have lush, bright colors and the Alcatraz ones are full of a warm radiance. If anything, they make the prison seem almost too pretty. There are a few cute cinematographic tricks. The most dramatic is the quick cut to an extreme close up of a spinning quarter.”

As you might have already guessed it, I highly recommend this movie, as it is one of the best action movies ever made. The best parts about it are the acting from the three main leads, the action in here is engaging, but there are some gory deaths. Other than that, you should watch this movie. Especially with lines like, “Your "best"! Losers always whine about their best. Winners go home and sleep with the prom queen,” and “But how, in the name of Zeus' BUTTHOLE!... did you get out of your cell? I only ask because in our current situation, well, it could prove to be useful information. *Maybe*!” See the film if you haven’t, you’ll love it. I can’t do the film justice by this review, it has to be seen to be believed.

Check in next week for another great review in “Nicolas Cage Month.”