Bayham madness!

Rating: 8/10 (13 March 2010)

The Rock is a perfect example of a Jerry Bruckheimer and Michael Bay film, simple popcorn action. A lot of people including myself have been critical of some of the films they have made and been criticised for dumbing down plots for simple profit.
Brigadier General Francis Hummel (Ed Harris) is a highly respected special forces general, who ends up being disillusioned with the American Government, when they dismiss the deaths of special forces soldiers, and not give families the money or the respect they deserve. He takes up extreme action to achieve his goal: with a special force team he steals a stockpile of VX from the US military and then takes hostiles on Alcatraz. Hummel threatens to fire the VX over San Francisco if his demands are not meant and the American government has limited options. The American government only option is to try and send in a special forces team, with a chemical weapons expert Stanley Goodspeed (Nicholas Cage) to disarm the weapons. The problem is that there is only one man who knows how to get into Alcatraz, John Mason (Sean Connery). The thing is, Mason was a former MI6 and SAS soldier, who was arrested by the American, and well unhappy of his arrest, and a now a man in his 60s.
Some critics and film fans believe that The Rock is Michael Bay's best film, seeing it as simple summer entertain that is not being pretentious. I disagree, I believe that The Island and Transformers are better films. However the Rock is Michael Bay at his best and worst. There are very good action sequences, especially the military based action. He is not reliant on massive CGI sequence like he is in his later films. Bay could make a good film about special forces. Bay also shoots the film with the aim of an R-rating, and not playing it safe like he has done. Bay also ensembles a good cast, this was when Nicholas Cage was at the height of his career. Sean Connery is in one of his better roles outside Bond, though his part has to be Scottish because he can't do any other accent: if his character was Russian it would have been a bit more believable. Ed Harris was the strongest performer in the film as a the villain, who was made to be a complex character who had a noble cause unlike some villains in summer blockbusters. Bay was also able to fill smaller roles with talented actors, like John Spencer, John C. McGinley and Michael Biehn. But there are a lot of problems that are common with Michael Bay films. Bay has no clue how to reign in his films and like Transformers, Armageddon, etc... The Rock is too long. Bay needs a good editor who can make his films more tort and well more watchable. With this sort of film where the plot is very simple then making it long really affects the film. Things could be have easily been cut, like the car chase in San Francisco. A problem with the film is tone. When the script is written it aimed to be very serious, whilst the re-writes and the direction by Bay wanted to make it more light hearted and comedic. This shows with the different performances, with Sean Connery and Nicholas Cage almost being like a buddy pair, whilst actors like Ed Harris and John Spencer were more serious in their roles. As well there are some script problems, where the film explains too much details to the audience, and not respecting their intelligence. The script also has plot holes, like wouldn't the media question why people were missing or couldn't get to Alcatraz.
In a film like this I describe Michael Bay as Oliver Stone with more explosions. This is a film that references at some conspiracy theories and American secret actions, like the locking up of Mason. A more political director would have flagged this issues up more, but a more political director possibility wouldn't have done this film. The theories involving Hoover and the microfilm wasn't needed at all.
There are enjoyable action scenes, but there are problems with this film.