The Rock (film)

The Rock
Directed by	Michael Bay
Written by	David Weisberg, Douglas S. Cook, and Mark Rosner
Produced by	Jerry Bruckheimer, Don Simpson Louis A. Stroller, and Sean Connery
Starring	Sean Connery Nicolas Cage Ed Harris Michael Biehn William Forsythe
Distributed by	Hollywood Pictures
Release dates	June 7, 1996 June 7, 1996 June 21, 1996 July 26, 1996
Running time	136 min
Language	English
Budget	US$75 million

The Rock (1996) is an action movie that primarily takes place on Alcatraz Island, and the San Francisco Bay area. It was directed by Michael Bay and stars Sean Connery, Nicolas Cage, and Ed Harris. The movie is dedicated to producer Don Simpson who died before the release of the movie.

Synopsis

Template:Spoiler John Patrick Mason (Connery) is an SAS operative imprisoned for stealing microfilm that contained U.S. government secrets. He also was the only person to ever escape from Alcatraz, although he was later recaptured. Afterwards he was locked in another maximum security prison, and any evidence of his existence was erased. All of this was partly orchestrated by James Womack (John Spencer), the FBI agent who is now the bureau director.

Years later, Marine Brigadier General Francis X. Hummel (Harris), disgusted by the way the government abandoned many of his men, assembles a rogue team of elite U.S. Marines (Force Recon) and occupies Alcatraz Island, taking a group of tourists hostage in the process. Hummel threatens to kill San Francisco's entire population with VX gas missiles unless the government agrees to pay out the contents of a supposed slush fund both to the families of American commandos lost in classified operations throughout the world, and to him and his men.

Mason, as the only man ever to escape from Alcatraz, is the only one who can guide Dr. Stanley Goodspeed (Cage), an FBI chemical weapons specialist educated at Columbia (B.A.) and Johns Hopkins (M.A. and Ph.D.) with limited field experience, and a team of U.S. Navy SEALs through the catacombs underneath the island to neutralize the threat.

Goodspeed and Mason soon find that they are the only ones left between Hummel's VX gas rockets and San Francisco after their team is met and killed by Hummel's forces. The men are forced to work together with Goodspeed's knowledge of the rockets and Mason's knowledge of the prison. Template:Endspoiler

Cast

File:38fb4338aa371.jpg

Mason and Goodspeed dismantling the chemical weapon.

• Sean Connery as Capt. John Patrick Mason
• Nicolas Cage as Dr. Stanley Goodspeed
• Ed Harris as Brig. Gen. Francis X. Hummel
• John Spencer as FBI Director James Womack
• David Morse as Maj. Tom Baxter
• William Forsythe as Special Agent Ernest Paxton
• Michael Biehn as Cmdr. Anderson
• Vanessa Marcil as Carla Pestalozzi
• John C. McGinley as Capt. Hendrix
• Tony Todd as Capt. Darrow

The pilot who bombs Nicholas Cage in the final scenes is played by Jim Caviezel before other projects made him a more recognizable star.

Production

Quentin Tarantino was an uncredited screenwriter on The Rock, along with Jonathan Hensleigh and Aaron Sorkin. Hensleigh in particular was aggrieved to not be credited. LA-based British screenwriting team Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais were brought in at Connery's request to rewrite his lines, but ended up altering much of the film's dialogue, including Goodspeed's reference to LPs sounding better than CDs. The car chase was not in the original script; it was Michael Bay's idea. It was Nicolas Cage's idea that his character wouldn't swear; his euphemisms include 'gee whiz' for Jesus Christ; 'A-hole' for asshole; and 'Zeus's butthole'. Cage had to fight the producers and directors to keep the butthole line, but he agreed to deliver the lines "How do you like how that shit works!" and "Eat this, you fuck!" as swearing is a staple of the action genre.

There were tensions during shooting between director Michael Bay and the Walt Disney Company executives who were supervising the production. On the commentary track for the Criterion Collection DVD, Bay recalls a time when he was preparing to leave the set for a meeting with the executives when he was approached by Sean Connery in golfing attire. Connery asked Bay where he was going, and when Bay explained he had a meeting with the executives, Connery asked if he could accompany him. Bay complied and when he arrived in the conference room, the executives' jaws dropped when they saw Connery appear behind him. According to Bay, Connery then stood up for Bay and insisted that he was doing a good job and should be left alone.

According to a document on Alcatraz Island (December, 2005), during the filming of the scenes with the hostages, the famous sliding doors wouldn't open. Help from the mainland had to be sought and the extras were stuck for several hours. For this reason, visitors are no longer allowed to be temporarily shut in.

The scene in which FBI director Womack is thrown off the balcony was filmed on location at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco. The filming led to numerous calls to the hotel by people who saw a man dangling from the balcony.

Sean Connery insisted the producers build a cabin for him on Alcatraz as he didn't want to travel from the mainland to the island every day; he got what he asked for.

Most of the scenes involving F/A-18s are stock footage of the U.S. Navy Blue Angels. The rescue team was partially composed of former Navy SEALs.

TV censorship

In the original UK DVD release, the scene in which Connery throws a knife through a sentry's throat and says "never hesitate" to Cage was cut. Consequently, a later scene in which Connery says to Cage, "at least you didn't hesitate too long" lost its impact on viewers who had not seen the first scene. Other cuts included a shot of the cockroaches exploding after being exposed to sarin; the massacre of the Navy SEALs (in particular a bloody exit wound); Mason shooting Gamble's feet and a close-up of his screaming face as the air conditioner falls; and Goodspeed's shooting of the Marine on the cannonball car has been trimmed. Interestingly, the latter scene has been left in whenever the movie is aired on UK TV.

When the movie premiered on German television (RTL), it was shown in two versions: the first version (starting at 8:15 pm) had most of its violence and gore cut, going so far as to suggest that some of the terrorists survived. The second version started at 11 pm, and left all scenes intact. This scheme was repeated for the second viewing.

Awards and recognition

The Rock won a number of minor awards, including 'Best On-Screen Duo' for Connery and Cage at the MTV Movie Awards as well as an Academy Award nomination for Best Sound.

The film was selected for a limited edition DVD release by the Criterion Collection, a distributor of primarily arthouse films that releases what it considers to be "important classic and contemporary films" and "cinema at its finest". In an essay supporting the selection of The Rock, Roger Ebert calls it "an action picture that rises to the top of the genre because of a literate, witty screenplay and skilled craftsmanship in the direction and special effects."[1]

Mistakes

• VX is not a blister agent, and does not melt the skin as seen in this film. Indeed, real blister agents do not have nearly as spectacular effects as depicted. VX does, however, cause loss of muscle control and convulsions that do eventually lead to asphyxiation.
• In reality, if one is to come in contact with VX, the recommended antidote is an injection of atropine into the thigh or buttocks.
• Also, after an injection of atropine, a person would not be in any position to disarm a bomb, or run outside and set off signal flares.
• When Nicolas Cage takes hold of the Ferrari 355 Spyder, you can clearly see that he drops the parked car into 3rd gear but manages to peel out of the parking area.
• In the scene in which the President speaks before approving the airstrikes, an F/A-18 Hornet is being pulled out of a hangar. The F/A-18 is only used by the U.S. Navy and U.S. Marines, and not by the U.S. Air Force. This error was acknowledged on the DVD commentary.
• In the credit sequence, the actor William Forsythe's name appears twice.

Connections with other films and entertainment

• Sean Connery's reply when Goodspeed introduces himself is, "But of course you are." This is the reply Connery as James Bond gives to Plenty O'Toole when she introduces herself in Diamonds Are Forever (1971). It is also the reply Connery gives in Rising Sun (1993) when a threatening bodyguard tells him he's a black-belt. The line is also used by Clancy Brown as The Kurgan, in the movie Highlander (1986) which also features Sean Connery.
• Besides the above quote, Sean Connery's character possesses other Bond-like qualities. John Mason is a British secret agent ("Oh, I was trained by the best. British Intelligence.") who was active in the 1960s. Mason is still capable of remarkable physical ("In my day, we did it all with a snorkel and flippers") and mental feats (able to recall precise details of Alcatraz's operations more than three decades after his successful escape in 1963).
• The line "I'll take pleasure in guttin' you, boy" is a reference to the 1979 Clint Eastwood film Escape from Alcatraz.
• In the hotel suite, the song "Leaving on a Jet Plane" can be heard in the background while Mason gets a haircut. The same song is sung by the astronauts in Bay's later film Armageddon. In addition, the unnamed President of the United States is also played by the same actor (Stanley Anderson) in both films.
• The line Nicholas Cage uses while holding a VX chemical round, "You shoot me, I drop this, and we're both dead", is said again in the film National Treasure (2004) while Cage stands around barrels of gunpowder with a lit flare in his hand.
• The video game Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty borrows some basic plot elements from this movie. Similar details include an underwater infiltration of a waterlogged fortress taken hostage by a former US military team gone rogue. The main character, a rookie with no combat experience, must ally with a shady master commando with his own agenda to defuse explosive devices located all over the structure after a US SEAL team gets wiped out. Harry Gregson Williams was also invited to produce the game's sound track. (It should be noted that the game Metal Gear Solid, which has a nearly identical plot to Metal Gear Solid 2, was in production before this film was released).
• The computer game Command & Conquer: Yuri's Revenge features a cut scene in which a number of American fighter planes fly by the Golden Gate Bridge and attack Alcatraz Island, just like in this movie.
• Gregory Sporleder and Tony Todd, the actors who played the real "villains" of the film, each had one episode guest spots on the television series 24.
• In the final moments of the air strike on Alcatraz, the pilot, played by Jim Caviezel, yells out, "Jesus Christ!" after dropping the bomb a second short of receiving the abort command. Caviezel later stars as Jesus in the movie, The Passion of the Christ.
• The quote "Losers' always whine about their best, Winners' go home and fuck the Prom Queen" is used at the start of the song "Never Never Land" by Australian hardcore rock band I Killed The Prom Queen.
• This is the first of three consecutive movies featuring Nicolas Cage, all of which are of the action genre, to feature a finale where Cage is flying through the air during an explosion. The other two movies are, in chronological order, Con Air and Face/Off. This one features Cage flying through the air following an explosion of an accidentally dropped bomb by the F/A-18.

External links

• The Rock at IMDb
• The Rock at Rotten Tomatoes
• Criterion Collection essay by Roger Ebert