Great Example Of The Genre

Rating: 7/10 (7 February 2007)

I'm whispering now as just in front of me we can see that most glorious of creatures, the Action Movie, or Carus Spectaculum. This, noble creature is often the prey to the critic. Often we find this lumbering yet majestic beast devoured, picked apart by the savage predator, all that remains left for scavengers of little intelligence to enjoy. Ironically the voracious critic is unable to digest the Action Movie, often tearing it apart simply for the fun of it. Confused by the vivid colours and often loud displays of prowess performed by this simple creature the critic reacts with hostility Don't get me wrong, I don't think that spending 20 million dollars on petrol and a box of matches is good enough, an action movie needs some kind of plot and some level of acting, but on the other hand a well crafted action movie is just as hard to make as some kind of art-house flick about lesbian Jews in the Nazi party. Much like movies are viewed with a great deal of snobbery by certain people, so are action movies viewed with a great deal of snobbery by certain critics. In the case of The Rock, those critics need to shut up.
When General Hummel (Ed Harris) decides to hold San Francisco hostage by bringing 15 rockets containing the very nasty VX gas to Alcatraz, it falls down to science-wiz Stanley Goodspeed (Nicolas Cage), ex-SAS officer John Mason (Sean Connery) and a handful of soon-to-be-killed Navy Seals to go there and deal with the threat. Neither Stanley or Mason want to go to Alcatraz but one is the only man who the government trust to be able to disarm the rockets containing the nasty poison, the other is the only man ever to escape from Alcatraz. I'll leave you to work out which is which. It seems that Mason has spent the last 30 years of his life in prison because in the 60s he stole a lot of very secret information about the U.S. government. He's a dangerous man. Hummel, by the way, isn't doing this for the money. He has taken this drastic course of action because he is tired of the way the U.S. military and the U.S. government conduct themselves. I think we can all empathise. However honourable his intentions may be, he did unfortunately choose The Candyman as one of his henchmen, so we know it's going to come to no good. After many seriously gruesome deaths, the fate of the world is saved, Goodspeed and Mason gain a respect for one another and we leave, picking the popcorn from between our teeth.
This is a Don Simpson/ Jerry Bruckheimer action movie. We know that the good guys are going to win. We know that the bad guys are all going to die. We know that a car will explode/ overturn at the slightest provocation, unless driven by the hero. What we don't know is how well the action is going to be pulled off or if the plot and acting will carry us from one set piece to the next. My friends, The Rock delivers. It has a thoughtful villain, someone who is trying to right an injustice. The two heroes are not your typical action movie characters, one is a chemist who is more at home at the office rather than the shooting range, the other a pensioner. In fact let me dwell upon Cage and Connery for a moment here. Cage seems to me to be one of the finest leading men in Hollywood. He is highly versatile, good looking and not afraid to make himself look silly. Anyone prepared to sit in a pair of swimming trunks to play the guitar in a scene deserves your respect. As for Connery well in The Rock the former Mr. Universe contestant still looks pretty big. Lets be frank here, he's basically playing a version of James Bond who has grown old, he even uses a Bond response when Goodspeed tells him his name. ("But of course you are".) Ed Harris is fantastic, giving Hummel just the right level of intensity and sheer righteous indignation. The supporting cast also seem to know exactly what is expected of them, doing their jobs of getting beaten up by the heroes or standing around looking concerned by the bad guys with great aplomb.
Interestingly for an action movie the set pieces do not really stand out. I do not think that this is because they are not any good, but more because the cast are so great that when you leave you think about them more than the stunts. Yet I know I've watched an action movie, it FEELS like an action movie. The stunts are all good, the fight scenes are enjoyable and the gun battles suitably explosive. But when you have two actors who have won Oscars and one who has been nominated four times you have to expect some distractions from the F-18s, explosions and gun-toting sociopaths. I mean that in a good way.
Every now and then one of the cast will come out with some blinding lines, the kind which seem designed simply to be spliced into trailers. A few examples are: "Now Womack, you're between The Rock, and a hard case." "What's it gonna take to equip a flight of F-18s with thermite plasma within the next 36 hours?" "An act of God." And my personal favorite: "Get the Pentagon. And call the San Francisco Office. It seems Alcatraz was just reopened." Saying that The Rock is one of the best action movies made in the 90s seems like faint praise when one of it's main rivals consisted of Keanu Reeves on a fast moving bus. But it really is a good film, with all the right parts in all the right places. Shame it hasn't got a bunny too.