Every scene is a rollercoaster of excitment

Rating: Null/10 (8 November 1998)

The Rock is a great film, with non-stop action from the hilly streets of San Fransisco to the twisting tunnels and cellhouses of Alcatraz. The story itself was no less superb; Francis Xavier Hummel (Ed Harris), a renegade general, fed up with the lies and treatment that the government has been giving to its people and its soldiers, recruits some of his best men to help him rob a naval weapons depot. Having been ignored on several occasions by his government, he steals 15 rockets armed with a tremendously destructive material(VX gas) in order to get their attention. Hummel indeed gets the government's attention as they receive a ransom demand from his makeshift base on the rock: a large amount of money to compensate for the lives of the soldiers that he claims were abandoned by their government, or he deploys the rockets and incinerates the whole of the San Fransisco bay area. The government then calls on an unlikely superhero, Stanley Goodspeed (Nicholas Cage), a frail FBI field agent who's speciality just happens to be chemical weaponry. John Mason (Sean Connery), supposedly the only man who has ever escaped from Alcatraz, is also recruited to help navigate through the tunnels he knows so well. The characters are all very well developed, with fascinating sub-plots to each of them. Whether its Stanley and his pregnant wife waiting for his questionable return from the dangerous mission, or Mason and his long lost daughter, or Hummel and his valiant fight for justice, the characters alone make this movie worth watching over and over again.
P.S.- In addition to this gem of a movie, the soundtrack is also excellent.