Has everything

Rating: 10/10 (26 July 1999)

I tend to enjoy movies that have loads of stuff in them, if you know what I mean. Movies with loads of varying characters, exciting action scenes, many different locations, cool settings with loads of possibilities, interesting villains, lots of yelling, one-liners that make you crack up, wickedly cool music, a bit of sex, car chases, helicopters, two-way mirrors, stand-offs, mutinies, hostages, rockets, love, VX gas, revenge, cigars and a bomb disguised as a baby.
THE ROCK has it all. Not only do you get two very different heroes for the price of one, there is also one of the most fascinating bad guys I have ever seen in Ed Harris. His intentions are not evil or greedy or sadistic or pleasure-seeking like most other film villains but instead, General Hummel merely wants to honour the memory of his forgotten comrades who were killed under his command in Vietnam. As we are shown in the pre-title sequence, he has tried again and again to get the government to take back the lies told about their deaths to their families and give them compensation. So, General Hummel is not an evil man. His intentions are justified. However, what he does next is not so wise. By taking 81 tourists hostage on Alcatraz Island and threatening to launch poison gas into San Francisco Bay unless reparations are paid, he does not make too many friends. But the real nasties are his awful henchmen who would like nothing better than to launch the gas and so kill millions of innocent civilians. One of the best things about this movie is Ed Harris' performance as the troubled General who battles with his conscience. He is well-balanced by Gregory Sporleder and Tony Todd as the two evil captains who are the real bad guys of the story.
So, as well as villains, as I mentioned above, we also have two heroes. They are Nicolas Cage, as the intelligent but weedy Stanley Goodspeed and Sean Connery as the highly dangerous 60-year old convict John Patrick Mason who somehow find themselves in The Rock with the task of stopping the rockets from being launched in time. Connery and Cage make a superbly funny double act who always seem to be arguing and taking the p**s out of each other while depending on the other's skill in a certain field. Goodspeed's is diffusing the rockets, Mason's is killing the bad guys.
The set up is nicely rounded off with a brilliantly watchable array of supporting characters. Angry FBI director Womack, cool agent Paxton, strict Commander Anderson, loyal Major Baxter and Goodspeed's beautiful girlfriend, Carla.