Welcome to The Rock!

Rating: 9/10 (23 May 2008)

It's Die Hard on Alcatraz this time, ladies and gentlemen. It seems that now everybody's trying to do a hostage situation in certain movies after the first Die Hard made an impact on audience lives from Cliffhanger (Die Hard on Rocky Mountains), Speed (Die Hard on a bus) and now the 1996 movie "The Rock" directed by Michael Bay, who more or less is known for making high octane action movies with a plot for people not to think about. Here Michael makes an attempt to make to mix action, cool characters and an edge-of-your-seat adventure with an all-star cast.
The film's premise has General Hummel (Ed Harris) robbing nuclear weapons and using Alcatraz as a base filled with members of a tour where with the weapons he could melt half a city after a big impact and asking the government a heavy ransom before releasing a missile. The F.B.I. brings in chemical specialist Stanley Goodspeed (Nicholas Cage), a neurotic agent who doesn't say bad words and knows everything about every chemical ever made. Goodspeed gets a partner, a convict by the name of John Mason (Sean Connery), an ex-agent for the British Intelligence who doesn't know that his deal of being released is being cut by an old rival of the F.B.I. while serving as the only hope to save the people in the old prison.
With this being a Michael Bay movie, expect high action from every direction from a spectacular chase sequence in the San Francisco to the bad guys shooting the good guys with high power machine guns and unexpected surprises with emotion. One of the main reasons the film works besides the action is the relationship between Connery and Cage where despite their character differences in the film, somehow they depend on one another to save each other in certain situations and seeing how there's trust.
Overall, a very good action movie.