Lingering

Rating: 1/10 (21 July 2003)

Like many adolescent males, I hurriedly saw The Rock soon after its release as soon as I could. Like everyone else, I said it was a great movie, had lots of action, was extremely cool. Blah blah blah.
Then I saw Beverly Hills Cop and Top Gun and realized that Jerry Bruckheimer is the most overrated producer in Hollywood. It also solidified my point that Michael Bay is both overrated and not talented. The release of Armageddon and Pearl Harbor cemented that thought so hard in my brain that I will not be seeing another of his movies again.
There are ambitious directors like Oliver Stone, Steven Spielberg, and Sam Mendez. Then there are wannabes like Brian DePalma, Walter Hill, and Michael Bay. If John Hughes had been able to rebound from his failure Curly Sue with something along the lines of Ferris Bueller or the Breakfast Club, he would be back on my grade-A list.
With the Rock we get a by-the-numbers action effort that uses a lot of dialogue to try and get depth out of thin characters. Nicolas Cage and Sean Connery are fun to watch, but only on surface value. Both have done better work on better movies. Ed Harris shows he will never lose his "tough-guy" image, even 20 years after The Right Stuff.
That brings me to the next victim, Hans Zimmer. Poor Hans, he is forced into making typical action garbage that proves several things: 1. He is not James Horner 2. He is not John Williams-- Williams' ability to extract emotion from the audience will, probably, never be matched in our lifetime. 3. He is not Jerry Goldsmith-- Jerry has gone through every type of topic known to man and yet he is still the most underappreciated talent in Hollywood. Thankfully, Hans rebounded with Gladiator. Proving he finally knows how to write music. As you can guess, he didn't get the Oscar for it.
The action in The Rock is all about lingering. They linger on a crushed corpse, the linger on an impaled corpse, they linger on a "frustrated" Ed Harris. Action is about that, action. It is about fluidity and motion, not sitting around while something else happens. If they want to sit around, then that's suspense.
Overall, a fair enough action effort that has no surprises or lasting appeal. John Woo would get it right with Face/Off. 2.5 out of 5 stars.