Rock bottom

Rating: 1/10 (29 June 2005)

This is a pretty grim piece of effluent. A monument to everything I hate in Hollywood blockbuster trash. Noisy incomprehensible and some of the laziest acting by Sean Connery I've ever seen. The villain (Ed Harris  a great actor completely wasted) is a highly-decorated (aren't they all in these sort of movies) US general who has taken over Alcatraz and is threatening to blow up San Francisco Bay area (pity that couldn't have been the Michael Bay area) unless $100 million is paid in ransom, as restitution to families of soldiers who died in secret operations. This is taking our compensation culture too far methinks. But that's Okay then as far as the plot is concerned as at least he's not doing out of any selfish motive and you cannot have a depiction of a really psychotically evil military man these days otherwise you might have the Right Wing reaching for their assault rifles. Of course the only man who can stop him is a geriatric prisoner (arise Sir Sean) a former Alcatraz escapee and you've guessed the rest. This movie is offensives on just about every level. The nadir of this film, which incidentally gave me the biggest snigger, was the line from Connery when he talks about his anxieties about making it sexually unmolested from the prison showers everyday. The idea that any prisoner no matter how perverted would be interested in Connerys flaccid old ass had me hooting. Is Connery now so old and senile as to not see how dumb and funny that line is. Or is it symptomatic of the hubris of elderly superstars that nobody tells you the obvious. Which is sad because Sean Connery always struck me as a pretty grounded individual with few airs (not to mention hairs) and graces?
Rent the Sean Connery classic The Hill (1965) to see what a fine actor he can be and get this dire rubbish out of your system.