Decent, but nothing special

Rating: 6/10 (18 February 2004)

Since "The Rock" is a Jerry Bruckheimer movie, you pretty much know what to expect: lots of action, explosions, chases, one-liners, cheesy dialog, sentimental rubbish, and plot holes. The question is: do the good things (the action and the one-liners) outweigh the bad. In some movies like "Crimson Tide" they certainly do. In others, like "Armageddon" and "Pearl Harbor", they clearly don't. I'd say "The Rock" falls somewhere in the middle. It does some things right, some things wrong, and ends up being watchable, although not really special.
First, the good things. The acting is generally above par, even though Nicolas Cage isn't very convincing. Ed Harris and Sean Connery makes up for that though. Secondly, the plot is fairly believable (for a mindless action movie that is) and even though there is again a lot of scientific nonsense, the movie doesn't cross the line into ridiculousness too much. One of the really nice touches is that the "bad guy" (Harris) is actually a fairly decent guy instead of the usual crazed maniac. The problem was that I cared more for the bad guy than for Cage's dull character or Sean Connery on autopilot. The one-liners could have used some serious work too. Oh well, at least the action is generally quite good.

"The Rock" really screws up when it tries to add some depth, though. This movie would have worked as a mindless action movie, but instead (probably to please a larger audience) all kinds of romantic/family sub plots had to be added. These plots are all quite unbelievable and boring as hell. Also, the movie gets way too sentimental at times, for example in the totally unnecessary and very unbelievable scene in which an entire SWAT team gets slaughtered by the bad guys.
If all the sentimental sub plots would have been dropped and the movie would have been shortened by thirty minutes, it would have been great. As it is now, it's a mildly entertaining movie with some good action and a couple of nice touches, but also with way too much sentimental scenes that don't go anywhere.
** out of **** stars