Rock, The (1996)

reviewed by
Paulo Sargaco


                                   THE ROCK
               A film review by Paula Sargaco
                Copyright 1996 Paula Sargaco

This movie achieves a doubtfull feat, beeing at the same time predictable and a good thriller. The pregnancy annoucement is predictable, the change in the missil launch coordinates as well the general's (Ed Harris) attitude towards the whole mission are predictable, the major's final move is predictable and finally the 'Mason's dead' scene is quite predictable indeed. But even though all these predictabilities exist Michael Bay manages to build a fairly interesting thriller ambiance while the movie's heroes, Goodspeed (Sean Connery) and Mason (Nicolas Cage), crawl under Alcatraz' tunnels. The characters are pretty well constructed and Michael Bay doesn't give in to the temptation of making Mason an even-though-he's-quite-old-he's-still-a-superman kind of guy and it's my opinion making Goodspeed a somewhat goofy and not that combat-fit FBI agent was a good bet. Another proof of Bay's good sense is the not excessive amount of explosions used in the film, in fact, I would almost dare to say he used the exact amount. There were some not that credible scenes though but I suppose in movie of this kind it must be almost impossible not to have them. As examples we have the scene in wich Mason throws Cormak, FBI director (or whatever), out the terrace, holding him only whith the thinnest thread. The result would be that FBI would have to get a new director and the city would have a hell of a time scraping him from the pavement. The other scene is the one in which Cage's character is projected into the water by the explosion of the bombs thrown by the F-18s. If these bombs were intended to melt the VX stuff I gess poor Goodspeed would have turned into a very small amount of ashes scattered in the four winds. But I guess leavind dear pregnant Carla without a husband to help her raise the unborn child would be a very cruel option even though stuff like that happens all the time. But then, this is a movie. Another scene I would like to mention is the one in wich all the SEALs get killed. It is, in my opinion, very well achieved and leaves you with a cry of powerlessness stuck in your throat. It hurts even though you didn't really had the time to bond with the SEAL's charaters.

Finally a small word for this movie's motivation. It seems north americans are starting to go sweet on these "The Internal Enemy" (or "They", if your prefer short terms) stories. It's only healthy to be a little paranoid about the next door neighbour.


The review above was posted to the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due to ASCII to HTML conversion.

Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews