The Rock - the way to make an action thriller movie

Rating: 10/10 (13 November 2005)

There are negatives to the movie, including some stilted and corny dialogue, and some believability issues, but the acting, the rest of the script, and the action, all sells it.
The best part of the movie is the way the plot twists and turns in all the right places. Not simply for shock effect, but in a believable manner that places the characters in tense, suspenseful, and powerful situations. For example, when the Navy SEALS are all massacred, it sets up the villains as a formidable threat, while leaving Goodspeed and Mason alone as an odd pairing against unbelievable odds to save the day. That is a great plot point.
The movie itself is a thrilling ride, and though it uses previous action clichés and movie tropes, it pushes it in a fun, polished, and unpredictable way. The tension just gets amped up each act, in ways where you really wonder where the movie is going to go.
For instance, when the deadline passed and the Marines launched a VX rocket at San Francisco, I was thinking, No they didn't! It was crazy! The threat was real and you had no idea what was going to happen. It made perfect sense in terms of the story that these hardened Marines would actually make good on the threat, and then finally Hummel in a move that fits the character diverts the rocket into the ocean.
The movie did a great job amping up the threat of the VX chemical to a dangerous point. Other thriller directors like Hitchcock would simply have used the VX gas as a MacGuffin, and a looming threat that all the characters are fighting over. But Bay in this movie actually uses it in the final climax, and the audience is on pins and needles wondering the effect of this hyped up threat. This happens when Goodspeed is fighting for his life after disarming the last rocket, and he smashes the VX in the sadistic Marines' mouth. A great moment that just blows the audience away.
The scene then leads to Cage stumbling because of his obvious exposure to the gas and managing to stick a huge needle of atropine into his own heart. Bay just took Tarantino's Pulp Fiction moment and just amped it up considerably. What a great dramatic moment, where else but in the movies are you going to see something as crazy as that.
Then all the while the threat of complete obliteration by the thermite plasma is looming on the horizon, and so Cage in his delirium after doing all that needs to save the day again. In some great stylistic shots by Bay, Cage remembers that he needs to light the green flares to show the mission accomplished, and the way he pops them and stumbles outside holding them up while kneeling was just a great iconic moment. That's just a dramatic picture at its best. "I see green!" "Abort!, abort!" True action thrillers like this that take a big premise and are actually able to execute it too good effect are rare. Though Bruckenheimer and Bay have been criticized for their over-the-top blow 'em up action style, you can't deny the excellence of their specific genre craft. Besides the excellent actors and the script, the production values also made this film a true summer blockbuster, that's been imitated many times since, but have yet to be surpassed.