'Uh, yeah, okay, that's about the most awful thing I've ever seen.'

Rating: 8/10 (3 September 2012)

That headliner line is not about the film - it is one of the funnier lines spoken by Nicholas Cage in this knockout movie. Almost twenty year old, this film - THE ROCK - remains one of the most entertaining and powerfully performed and produced action films in cinema history. Re-examining It today finds it still as fresh as ever - a film that keeps you on the edge of your seat with a solid story (David Weisberg, Douglas Cook, and Mark Rosner) and pitch perfect direction from Michael Bay. Yes, there are many special effects (pyrotechnics, underwater fighting, the recreation of the bowels of Alcatraz, etc), a dialogue that allows the intervention of comic relief in a situation that seems impossible to find humor, and some very fine performances by a huge cast of actors. It is an 'escape movie', both for the audience and for the story.
Dr. Stanley Goodspeed (Nicholas Cage, in one of his better roles), who lives in Washington D.C., is a biochemist who works for the FBI. Soon after his fiancée Carla Pestalozzi (Vanessa Marcil) announces that she is pregnant, Stanley gets a call from FBI director James Womack (John Spencer). Womack tells Goodspeed that San Francisco's Alcatraz Island has been taken hostage, along with 81 tourists, by marine General Francis Xavier Hummel (Ed Harris) who, for years, has been protesting the government's refusal to pay benefits to families of war veterans who died during covert military operations. The death of his wife Barbara Hummel on March 9, 1995 drove General Hummel over the edge, and now he's holding hostages in order to get his point across. Goodspeed is needed because General Hummel has stolen some VX gas warheads and has announced that he will launch them onto San Francisco unless his demands are met. Goodspeed knows how to disarm the bombs, but he needs someone who knows Alcatraz well enough to get him inside and that someone is a former Alcatraz escapee James Patrick Mason (Sean Connery). The wise and experienced Mason and the nerdy brainy but intimidated Goodspeed make an odd couple but head to Alcatraz in an attempt to foil Hummel's terrorist scheme.
The large supportive cast is populated with such actors as David Morse, William Forsythe, Bokeem Woodbine, Danny Nucci, Claire Forlani, Jim Caviezel, John Enos III, Richard Conti, Raymond Cruz and Philip Baker Hall. It is a bit long but never fails to keep your interest. A good old-fashioned Hollywood blockbuster action flick!
Grady Harp