Saved by some imaginative casting

Rating: 6/10 (1 April 2008)

Renegade Marine Corps General Francis X Hummel and a troop of former marines seize control of Alcatraz Island and threaten to attack San Francisco with chemical weapons unless their demands are met. They are also holding hostage a party of tourists, so the authorities are reluctant to order the Air Force to bomb the island. Instead, a crack unit of Navy SEALs is ordered to retake the island, but they are ambushed by the marines, and all but two of the party are killed in a firefight. It is down to the two survivors, Stanley Goodspeed and John Mason, to try and save the situation.
The above plot could have been the basis for a very dull shoot-anything-that-moves film starring somebody like Steven Segal as Goodspeed and Jean-Claude van Damme as Mason. It is saved, however, by some imaginative casting. I have never regarded Nicolas Cage, with his lanky figure and long, lugubrious-looking face, as one of the cinema's most natural action heroes. The casting directors of films such as "Windtalkers" and "National Treasure" obviously disagree with me, but the casting director of "The Rock" presumably agrees. Cage seems to have been cast here precisely because Goodspeed is an unlikely hero.He is only on the team because he is the FBI's leading scientific expert on chemical weapons, and has spent his whole career in the laboratory, having never had a chance to practise the very rusty combat skills he learnt many years ago at the FBI academy.
Mason is an equally unlikely saviour. Although he is a former member of the British SAS, he is now sixty years old and has spent more than thirty years in prison after being arrested in possession of American intelligence secrets. He has, however, never been convicted of any crime, but has been detained for the whole of that time without trial. The reason for his detention is not so much to punish him for his espionage activities but rather to prevent him from revealing what he knows about the CIA's most embarrassing secrets, including the truth about the UFO landings in Roswell and about the Kennedy assassination. He is on the team because he is the only man to break out of Alcatraz (he was recaptured soon afterwards) and therefore presumably knows how to break back in: he has been promised a presidential pardon in exchange for his cooperation.
Mason is played by the original James Bond himself, Sean Connery. Connery was happy to be rid of the role of 007 after "Diamonds are Forever", but he later had second thoughts because he returned to it in "Never Say Never Again", and has continued to play Bond-like characters in action films. His most recent film, "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen", was one such example, and "The Rock" is another. Like the Bond films, it combines action with tongue-in-cheek humour, especially during the car chase sequence. (Ever since films like "Bullitt" and "Magnum Force" in the early seventies, car chases seem to be obligatory in action films set in San Francisco).
One thing I asked myself while watching the film was why the villains were all ex-Marines. Their cause- the payment of increased pensions to the widows of special forces troops killed on covert operations- is the sort of thing that might inspire retired Generals to write angry letters to the press. It would not normally provoke them to attack a major city with nerve gas. Would it not have been better if the villains had been terrorists of one ideological persuasion or another? There are, I think, two answers to this question. This first is that the scriptwriters probably found it implausible that a gang of terrorists could wipe out an elite force of Navy SEALs; a squad of Marines would stand a better chance. The second, and more important, reason is that the film has some sympathy with Hummel's cause, if not with his methods of pursuing it. It falls within that tradition of films- other examples include the Rambo series and "Clear and Present Danger"- which portray America's armed forces as decent and honourable but their masters, both politicians and Pentagon officials, as anything but. Mason, for example, only takes part in the mission very reluctantly, as he mistrusts (with good cause) the sincerity of the officials who have promised him a pardon.
Insofar as a blackmailer threatening to unleash nerve gas on a city can be sympathetic, therefore, Hummel is a sympathetic figure. He is not some cartoonish Bond villain like Goldfinger or Blofeld, but a much-decorated war hero who cares deeply about the brave men under his command, who is full of righteous anger about the shabby way they have been treated by the authorities, and who has been driven to extreme measures by those authorities' refusal to see reason. It is therefore a role which calls for a sensitive, nuanced portrayal and gets one from Ed Harris, an actor who can often lift an otherwise ordinary film above the mundane.
There are a number of plot holes; how, for example, did Mason find out the truth about the Kennedy assassination when he was in prison at the time it was committed. And if he posed such a threat why did the authorities send him to a public prison like Alcatraz instead of somewhere much more secret? Or simply kill him? Nevertheless, this is an enjoyable, well-paced action adventure with some good acting and lightened by the occasional touch of humour. 6/10