Consistently exciting and engaging thriller

Rating: 9/10 (6 August 2013)

The Rock is an absolutely brilliant film which is jam packed with excitement, humour, tension and it also contains characters with plenty of depth.
The film begins with General Francis X Hummel (Ed Harris) at his wife's grave apologising to her saying that he 'is sorry and that he has to do this'. Hummel is the leader of the US Marines and we see in the beginning that he gains access to Alcatraz to steal biological weapons under the pretence that they are carrying out a security check. Once they have the weapons, this then sets up the second act where Hummel and his men seize control of Alcatraz by appearing to be on a tour of Alcatraz with a group of civilians. Once inside the prison, Hummel and his men take their opportunity and hold the civilians and the tour guide hostage. Hummel makes his demands to the FBI and the government and demands a substantial amount of money within 40 hours otherwise he will unleash the biological weapons onto San Francisco Bay.
What makes the Rock stand out as a good thriller is that this isn't just a case of a lunatic just holding people hostage for no apparent reason? We get to learn that Hummel and his men all feel cheated by the government - members of their platoon lost their lives with seemingly no acknowledgement from the government. They are also angry as there was no compensation from the government for the victims of those men who lost their lives. This sets Hummel and his men up sort of as 'vigilantes'. So whilst what they are doing is wrong, in a way they feel that they are on a 'moral crusade' - they don't see why they should value other people's lives when the government clearly didn't care about the lives of any of their men that were killed. This not only gives the story depth, but it also gives the characters depth too.
Due to the intelligence that the Marines have, the government and the FBI know that they need to send the 'best' that they have in order to infiltrate the Marines and free the hostages. They feel they need a chemical weapons expert Stanley Goodspeed (Cage) in order to disarm the bombs, but in order for the weapons expert to be able to disarm the bombs they'll need someone who knows the prison inside and out and thus they also send in the only man to ever escape Alcatraz John Mason (Connery) who has been incarcerated for over 30 years. Mason is reluctant to help at first and only agrees to help in order to get a pardon - a lot of fun in the Rock comes from Mason's numerous escape attempts (which are usually quite creative). It is also amusing to see the 2 men constantly trying to 'out do' each other.
Another thing that I enjoyed was the 'tongue in cheek' approach that Michael Bay has taken when making this film. Not only have we got a film with a strong plot and good character development, but it is clear that both Bay and the cast had fun when making this film. There were so many funny moments and great one liners that I just can't remember all of them.
Then we come to the acting. Sean Connery is one of my favourite actors and he always seems to bring that little something extra in any film he appears in. I predicted before I started watching the film that he would have some of the funniest lines and I was right. Nicolas Cage is a bit of a hit and miss actor in my book, but I thought he was great in this as well. I felt that him and Connery played off each other really well.
This is an outstanding film with lots of tension, plenty of funny scenes, good plot and is packed full of great characters and is definitely not to be missed!