"The Rock'' is a 1996 in film action film that primarily takes place on Alcatraz Island, and the San Francisco Bay area. It was directed by Michael Bay, director of ''Bad Boys (1995 film)'', and stars Sean Connery, Nicolas Cage, and Ed Harris. It was produced by Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer, producers of ''Top Gun (film)'' and ''Crimson Tide (film)", and released through Disney's Hollywood Pictures. The film is dedicated to Simpson, who died five months before its release. This was the first film on which Cage and Bruckheimer worked together.

Plot

A group of rogue Force Recon Marines led by disenchanted Brigadier General#United States Francis Hummel (Ed Harris) seizes a stockpile of rockets armed with VX gas, a chemical weapon from a military bunker, losing one of their men in process. Hummel seizes Alcatraz Island and takes 81 tourists hostage in the prison cells, threatening the The Pentagon with launching the rockets against the population of San Francisco unless the government pays ransom and reparations to the families of Marines who died on illegal, clandestine missions. The Pentagon and FBI develop a plan to retake the island with a Navy SEAL team, enlisting chemical weapons expert Stanley Goodspeed (Nicolas Cage). In need of first-hand knowledge of Alcatraz, FBI Director Womack (John Spencer (actor)) is forced to turn to prisoner John Mason (Sean Connery), the only inmate of Alcatraz to ever successfully escape. Though Mason escapes custody and leads the FBI on a high-speed chase through the streets of San Francisco to see his estranged daughter, Goodspeed convinces him to aid the mission. Goodspeed also covers for Mason with his daughter so it seems like Mason is working for them and didn't escape. With Mason's guidance, the team infiltrates Alcatraz, but is ambushed by Hummel's marines, leaving only Mason and Goodspeed alive. They disable the rockets one-by-one and eliminate small teams of Marines until they are captured. With the incursion team lost, the military readies a backup plan, an attack by armed F-18s that will neutralize the poison gas but kill everyone on the island. As Mason uses his unique experience to escape from their cells, he reveals why he was held there for so many years—for stealing a microfilm of the United States' most closely-guarded secrets. While they search for the final two rockets, Hummel fires one but aborts it, convincing his mercenaries that he has only been bluffing. They revolt, fatally wounding him in a firefight and proceeding with the plan to fire on San Francisco. With his last breath, Hummel tells Goodspeed the location of the last rocket. As the armed jets approach, Goodspeed disarms it but is attacked and uses the VX to defend himself. Dying from the gas, he injects himself in the heart with the antidote and lights green flares to signal that the threat is over—but only after one of the pilots fires, sending Goodspeed's body flying into the sea. The early detonation hits the back of the island and harms no one else. Mason reappears to pull the unconscious Goodspeed to shore, who gives him time to escape before the FBI arrives, telling Womack he's been "vaporized." The film ends with Goodspeed and his pregnant bride Carla in Fort Walton, Kansas, on the advice of a note from Mason, recovering the microfilm with a half century of state secrets.

Cast

Sean Connery as Secret Intelligence Service agent Captain John Patrick Mason, former Special Air Service
Nicolas Cage as Federal Bureau of Investigation Special Agent Stanley Goodspeed
Ed Harris as Brigadier General Francis X. Hummel, United States Marine Corps Force Reconnaissance
Tony Todd as Captain Darrow, USMC Force Recon
John Spencer (actor) as Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation James Womack
David Morse (actor) as Major Tom Baxter, USMC Force Recon
William Forsythe (actor) as FBI Special Agent in Charge and head of San Francisco field office Ernest Paxton
Michael Biehn as Commander Anderson, United States Navy SEALs
Danny Nucci as Lieutenant Shephard, USN SEAL
Vanessa Marcil as Carla Pestalozzi
Gregory Sporleder as Captain Frye, USMC Force Recon
John C. McGinley as Captain Hendrix, USMC Force Recon
Claire Forlani as Jade Angelou
Bokeem Woodbine as Sergeant Crisp, USMC Force Recon
Steve Harris (actor) as Private McCoy, USMC Force Recon
Jim Maniaci as Private Scarpetti, USMC Force Recon
Brendan Kelly (actor) as Private Cox, USMC Force Recon James Caviezel, Xander Berkeley, Stuart Wilson, and Raymond Cruz appear in various uncredited roles.

Box office

Produced at a budget of US $75,000,000, the movie was a smash hit, grossing a total of $134,069,511 domestically and $200,993,110 internationally, for a worldwide total of $335,062,621. It was the 7th highest grossing film of 1996 in the US, and the 4th highest worldwide.http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=rock.htm

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. Los Angeles-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. The car chase was not in the original script; it was Michael Bay's idea. It was Nicolas Cage's idea that his character would not swear; his euphemisms include "gee whiz." 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, who also produced the film, 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. The scene in which FBI director Womack is thrown off the balcony was filmed on location at the The Fairmont San Francisco in San Francisco. The filming led to numerous calls to the hotel by people who saw a man dangling from the balcony. "Great Hotels". The Travel Channel The fact that Connery's character, John Patrick Mason, was a British secret service agent imprisoned since the 1960s alludes to Connery's famous role as James Bond (character). This is similar to his casting as Henry Jones Sr. in "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade".

In popular culture

The scene where Special Agent Goodspeed struggles to set off green flares in order to spare the island from an airstrike was replicated in the video game "", in which the player, a 75th Ranger Regiment, must fight his way to the roof of the White House and set off green flares in order to stop the United States Air Force from carpet bombing Washington, D.C., which is thought to be under Armed Forces of the Russian Federation control. The shower room shootout scene is also re-enacted in the mission "The Gulag." A reference to 'The Rock' appears in the video game World in Conflict in the level 'Liberty lost', in which Spetsnaz GRU units seized Liberty Island, Ellis Island and Governors Island and threatened to launch an attack against New York with chemical weapons, stored in the Statue of Liberty. After calling in an airstrike against the Statue, Colonel (United States) Sawyer, the player's commanding officer, orders the player to attack the remaining Soviet forces on Liberty Island and recapture the island in eight minutes. If the player is successful, Sawyer calls off the airstrike, after looking through his binoculars and spotting green smoke next to the Statue of Liberty, just seconds before USAF F-15E Strike Eagle arrive and fly by the Statue. "" also features a skit on the "green flare" scene—as the lead characters escape on a plane, the monkey "Able" waves green flares as they fly overhead.

Censorship

In the original UK DVD release, the scene in which Connery throws a knife through a sentry's throat and says "you must never hesitate" to Cage was cut, although this scene was shown on British television. Consequently, a later scene in which Connery says to Cage, "I'm rather glad you didn't hesitate too long" lost its impact on viewers who had not seen the first scene. Other cuts included the reduction of multiple gunshot impacts into Gamble's feet in the morgue down to a single hit; a close-up of his screaming face as the air conditioner falls onto him; a sound cut to Mason snapping a Marine's neck and two bloody gunshot wounds (to Hummel and Baxter), both near the end of the film. When the film 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 1 am, and left all scenes intact. This scheme was repeated for the second viewing. The film also received some censorship of profanity in its Asian releases; the terms "fuck" and "Goddamn" are normally omitted or substituted. For instance, whenever Star Movies (a popular Asian movie channel) plays the film, Connery's line in which he says to Cage "winners go home and "fuck'' the prom queen" is replaced with "winners go home and ''date" the prom queen."

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. It currently holds a "fresh" rating (65%) on Rotten Tomatoes. The film was selected for a limited edition DVD release by the Criterion Collection, a distributor of primarily arthouse films it categorizes as "important classic and contemporary films" and "cinema at its finest". In an essay supporting the selection of "The Rock", Roger Ebert, who was strongly critical of most of Bay's later films, 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."http://www.criterion.com/asp/release.asp?id=108&eid=120§ion=essay&page=2

References

External links

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