THE ROCK
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1996 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule: Hannibal Lector meets UNDER SIEGE.
There is a little too much action packed into 131
minutes, though not a whole lot that is new or
novel. There are all sorts of unexpected but
strangely familiar action film sequences like a
mine train ride and a spectacular San Francisco car
chase. Even the Zimmer score seems like an old
friend. Toward the end it really goes over the
top. Still it does deliver what the audiences are
coming to see. Rating: high +1 (-4 to +4). A
discussion of plot weaknesses follows the main
review and includes some plot spoilers.
A large part of the idea and appeal of Batman in the early days was that he was a sort of Dracula, the crime fighter. After all, if Dracula was so powerful, think what a crime-fighter he would make. These days action films seem to be about terrorist plots and the kind of monster that scares people is the psychological kind like Hannibal Lector, and so is born a plot where someone with the deductive power of a Hannibal Lector is an anti-terrorist. (Okay, he is not exactly Lector, just like Batman was not exactly Dracula, but Lector clearly is much of the inspiration for the character.)
General Francis X. Hummel (played by Ed Harris) is one of the most respected and highly-decorated Marines this country has, but he also has seen the government betray some of his closest comrades in arms. Now he has planned and is executing a grandiose extortion scheme to see justice done and to make a tidy profit for himself. He is going to grab some tourists visiting Alcatraz Island and hold them for ransom. But that is just a part of the plot. Just to sweeten the kitty, if he and his men are paid nicely and on time they will refrain from shooting some of the world's most deadly chemical agent over San Francisco, thereby horribly killing everybody within the city limits. A crack FBI team is to be sent to Alcatraz to release the hostages and to nullify the chemical weapon. Chosen for the assignment is an FBI field agent and chemical expert, the wise-cracking Stanley Goodspeed (Nicholas Cage). The team also needs to send an expert on the interior of Alcatraz. And, yes, it turns out they have one, but they do not want anybody to know about him. He is not an FBI agent; he is a prisoner and the only man ever to have escaped from Alcatraz, lived, and gone free. But he has never had a trial and the government wants nobody even to know that he exists. Just the knowledge of why he is imprisoned could have serious political implications. His name is Patrick Mason and if he does not already sound formidable enough, he is played by Sean Connery! (Oh, incidentally, as for escaping from the Rock, there was someone who did escape from Alcatraz and made it to shore alive. He was, however, immediately arrested and at least reportedly he is the only man to have ever made it to shore.) If this illegally imprisoned man Mason can be made to help the team that will go to the island and try to disarm the missiles, they might have a chance to succeed. The problem is that Mason is himself a dangerous weapon and who he really hates is the FBI.
Nicholas Cage has a unique acting style. It is hard to mistake him for any other actor. He seems to go back and forth between small independent films and majors, letting the major films finance him while he goes back and tries something a little different, like LEAVING LAS VEGAS which netted him an Oscar. I am unconvinced that he has real acting range and most of the characters he plays seems to have the same schmaltzy, half-awake feel. Here he is playing an action hero, sort of, and he brings to it much the same feel as his Ben from LEAVING LAS VEGAS. Connery is always fun to watch (dragonized or not) and so is Ed Harris. There is little in the roles here that any of them gives us that we have not seen from him before with the exception that Cage has not play this physical a role before. This seems to be very much a by-the-numbers sort of film. This is Michael Bay's second major film as director, the previous being BAD BOYS.
The score is very, very Hans Zimmer, even for a Hans Zimmer score. Zimmer is joined by Nick Glennie-Smith, but the style is all Zimmer. If you have heard the music from BACKDRAFT and CRIMSON TIDE, you know the score. The pacing of THE ROCK is a little odd. Not that there is not always some action either going on or about to happen, but there is a long section in the first half of the film that seems to forget about Hummel's plot altogether and concentrate on whether the FBI can deal with Mason or not. Yes, there is action going on, but what is on the mind of the viewer is the main threat from Hummel, and diverting to long action scenes built around Mason seems a bad plot choice. Now I could be wrong about this, but I doubt that Alcatraz has somewhere in its bowels a mine train and something else that looks like an amusement park sky-ride. And this strange furnace with the flame and the stamping metal did not make a whole lot of sense to me either. It was a plot device needed to provide some suspense, but I for one would like to know a little more about what the intended purpose of this contraption was. Alcatraz seems to have more weird rooms in its lower levels than the Paris Opera House has in THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA. John Schwartzman's photography is heavy on colored filters and a smoky look.
In short, this is a summer action film that entertains for an afternoon and then fades away. Rate it a high +1 on the -4 to +4 scale.
For those who were wondering after the film who is this Don Simpson for whose memory THE ROCK is dedicated, he is the producer of the film. According to the Internet Movie Database he produced FLASHDANCE (1983), THIEF OF HEARTS (1984), BEVERLY HILLS COP (1984), TOP GUN (1986), BEVERLY HILLS COP II (1987), DAYS OF THUNDER (1990), THE REF (1994), DANGEROUS MINDS (1995), CRIMSON TIDE (1995), BAD BOYS (1995), and THE ROCK (1996).
SPOILER... SPOILER... SPOILER... SPOILER... SPOILER... SPOILER...
There is much toward the end of the film that leaves a sour taste in one's mouth. There were contrivances in the plot that just work too blatantly to smooth off rough edges. General Hummel was doing what he thought was right and there certainly were those in the audience who would probably have agreed. He was certainly risking his life for a principle. The film would have taken some risks by having an idealistic villain who was not just a fanatic and it would have been a nice touch to leave the character that way. But this was not a script to take any such risks. The script had to turn him around and make him change sides at the end so that there was no chance that anybody would be rooting for the bad guys. The script had to make sure that by the end of the film everyone the heroes were fighting were unquestionably bad. That makes the ending just a little too neat. Having Goodspeed stab himself in the heart (thank you, Mr. Tarantino), roll on the floor, then drag himself up in a dramatic pose to wave flares at the approaching planes was just a bit more overripe a climax than the film needed. All that was needed at that point was for a Great White Shark to jump out of the water and start nipping at his toes while a tidal wave bore down on him from the right. And does anybody have any idea how an injection in the heart can stop someone's skin from boiling off???
Oh, and by the way, Alcatraz was closed as a prison in 1963 so if Mason had spent so long in there it would have had to have been well prior to 1963. Now for what was he imprisoned and what were the last words of the film?
Mark R. Leeper
mleeper@lucent.com
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