“Staff Picks” is a deeper look into movies that we love here at Video CULTure. Each edition of this column will focus on a single film that we think you should check out, either for the first time or for a long-overdue revisit
By Patrick Bartlett (Twitter: @alleywaykrew)
Despite the myriad people who would disagree (especially on Twitter), art is subjective. There are very few objective truths in art. However, I’d almost be willing to die on the hill that we’d all agree that “The Rock” is Michael Bay’s best film. Even if you don’t like Bay’s work. I admittedly like a lot of it but as far as I’m concerned, “The Rock” is the high water mark. Moreover, it’s also my favorite Sean Connery movie. It’s almost certainly my favorite Nicolas Cage movie. It’s not my favorite thing featuring Michael Biehn but certainly not for lack of trying. That dude’s just a genre god. Speaking of, I think the best way to describe “The Rock” is that it’s one of the best genre movies in an era where studios were trying to figure out what the hell to do with genre movies.
The plot, which I’ll get to, when broken down is very simple. That’s not uncommon in action films in genera,l obviously. The thing that separates it from most of its ilk of the era is that it kind of mashes together the two most popular templates of action movies in the ‘90s: the “buddy cop” and the “Die Hard in/on a __”. Many films of the time period did one or the other but this is one of the few that was greedy enough to do both and I love it so very much for that. Anyway, the plot: Ed Harris plays a highly decorated military officer nemed Francis Hummel. Hummel has lost his wife and also lost many of his men over the years in various military operations. Scores of those men were disavowed by their government and never got even so much as a military burial. Hummel puts together a superteam of soldiers with the intention of taking the island prison of Alcatraz, and tourists visiting it, hostage. If he doesn’t get millions for the men who died under his command (both the fallen and those acting as mercenaries alongside him), he’ll launch missles filled with deadly VX gas into San Francisco, killing tens of thousands of people. The government’s only plan to try to stop him is to send a team of Navy SEALs with Nicolas Cage’s character of Stanley Goodspeed, an FBI agent that specializes in chemicals and has never been in the field alongside Sean Connery’s character, John Mason, a British SAS agent who is also the only man known to have broken out of Alcatraz, to try and infiltrate the prison and take it back before any civilian deaths occur.
Even on paper, that’s a pretty rad plot. The thing that really makes it work is the cast though. As I said, this is my favorite film of Sean Connery’s. When I think of Connery, “The Rock” is what comes directly to mind. Most people would say one of his films as James Bond and I think that’s part of why this is such a cool piece of work. My own personal “headcanon” is that James Bond is just a name that comes with the 007 title. That way, all of the Bond films and all of the Bonds fit together in an interesting way. On top of that, I like to think that John Mason IS Connery’s Bond. Bond was caught by Americans stealing intelligence in the ’60s and tossed in a hole to be forgotten about for his trouble while England moved on. Forever fascinating. However, even with that off the table, Connery is just so cool here. You might not think that a man in his sixties (as Connery was at this point in his career) could be a believable badass action hero but you’d be absolutely wrong. He still has all the charisma he ever had and can stand toe-to-toe with someone like Schwarzenegger in a similar role. He’s made to look even more badass next to Cage’s character. It might be kind of hard to remember now but in 1996, Cage had just won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance in “Leaving Las Vegas”. Respect for Cage and his work was at an all-time high. His first post-Oscar work was right here in “The Rock”, so he wasn’t recognized as the gonzo actor guy we all know now at this point. The phrase “full Cage” was not a thing. Here, he’s simply a leading man while also getting to play at being an action hero. He, of course, pulls it off. Goodspeed is a nerd. He’s a guy who you’re introduced to having as just having a $600 Beatles record delivered to him because he’s a self-described “Beatle-maniac.” He’s also in the very next scene shown to be extremely capable at his job of defusing chemical weapons. It’s completely believable that he’s out of his depth on Alcatraz while making his eventual heroic turn equally believable with just these two scenes for context. It really is an underrated performance overall. When you put Cage and Connery together, there’s a weird magic to their chemistry. You watch their mutual respect and bond form and strengthen basically in real-time. It’s believable in a way that isn’t just a given for a film like this.
On the side of the opposition, you have a wonderful performance by Ed Harris as Hummel. Due to Harris’ performance, his character is never once unsympathetic nor are his motives something you can easily dismiss. It’s hard to call him or his second-in-command (played by David Morse, practically the living embodiment of the underrated character actor) particularly villainous. However, for that, you have the freaking Candyman. Yes, Tony Todd is one of the soldiers (probably the most memorable) under Hummel’s command. The soldiers are differing levels of honorable and not so much and pull a lot of the heavyweight that Hummel’s character, who would be a heroic lead in almost any other movie, just can’t. In that, there’s a feeling of legitimate menace for the heroes and the SEAL team, led by Michael Biehn and featuring… well, no one particularly memorable that isn’t Michael Biehn if I’m being honest. That’s okay though. If you’re familiar with the tropes of “Die Hard in/on a __” and/or buddy cop action films, you know how important they’re going to be (spoilers: they only exist really for exposition and an action sequence).
Speaking of action sequences, the time has come to discuss Michael Bay and his ”Bayhem.” I have to note that this is Bay very early in his career as a director. I mean VERY early. He had done commercials. He had done music videos (as you do in the ’80s and ’90s). He had only done one other film and it was the previous year’s “Bad Boys”. I like “Bad Boys”. When I was 12, “Bad Boys” was a singularly cool film to me. Having said that, “The Rock” is a step up in pretty much every way. Bay feels more confident as a filmmaker. He has a way better sense of tone here. There isn’t such a wild tug-of-war between the comedic elements of this film and the action elements like there was in “Bad Boys”. I would be remiss though if not pointing out that there were still elements of Bay’s bad habits present. There are definitely times the constantly moving camera calls way too much attention to itself for my taste and there are characters that aren’t really serviced at all and yet exist all the same, etc. Stuff like that. It’s all made up for by how fun and bombastic everything is. The dialogue (apparently the script was heavily rewritten by many, including ’90s Hollywood script doctors du jour, Aaron Sorkin and Quentin Tarantino) absolutely snaps. There’s no sense of boredom waiting for the next action bit. The character stuff here is as interesting as any of the action sequences and that’s definitely not something that can be said for all of Bay’s work.
I’ve never really stopped thinking about this film. It’s always stuck with me. Maybe not at the forefront of my mind but it’s something I’ve always returned to. That being said, I’ve watched it so many times and not only does it hold up but I feel like it’s the rare film that gets better with age. That’s a big part of why I don’t understand why it doesn’t have a better reputation. For instance, a lot of people were either bemused or outright upset when it got the seal of quality from The Criterion Collection, but it always made perfect sense to me. It may not be what you consider a masterpiece but even Gordon Ramsay goes to In-N-Out Burger once in a while. Sure, it’s not an art film but as far as action films go, there’s not a lot on the same level. Especially of this era. It’s glorious. At the very least, we can all agree it’s Bay’s best film, right?
To find out where this film is available to stream, click here: Just Watch