The Rock

Now this is a movie that I watched in 2016 but just didn't have much time to write a full review for. However, it is a Saturday, I don't have to get out of bed for a couple more hours, so let's talk about The Rock.

The Rock is a movie that I honestly had never heard of until about a year or two ago. The weird thing is when I heard about it, I realized that in some circles, this is one of the most beloved action movies of the 90s. Now I'm not a huge fan of the 90s, I was pretty young so I wasn't incredibly atuned with the pop culture of the time but I am realizing that the 90s had a style to them that I'm not a huge fan of, and yet people in my age group revere everything 90s related in this weird nostalgic wave we're on these days. But since I love over the top action flicks and I see Michael Bay the same way Luke Skywalker sees Darth Vader believing that there is still good in him somewhere, I wanted to watch The Rock and see what I had been missing.

And believe me, I was missing something that is for sure.

The Rock opens up to Brigadier General Frank Hummel (played by Ed Harris) and his team of renegade Marines stealing a deadly nerve gas and enough weapons to blow up San Fransisco, and taking over Alcatraz Island with a bunch of hostages.

Hummel claims that this act of terrorism is to make a statement about the compensation of soldiers who have carried out secret missions for the US government and he demands that that compensation be met or he will fire rockets of this deadly toxin into the populace of the United States.

From the get go, you sympathize with Hummel. You realize that he's not necessarily a bad guy, he has good intentions, he's just going about them in the wrong way and has a deadly serious conviction to those intentions.

Enter Nicolas Cage. He plays FBI agent Dr. Stanley Goodspeed. He is a chemical weapons expert which basically means that he has no experience but a lot of knowledge. Though Goodspeed is a Special Agent, he's never used a weapon outside of training and he has no experience fighting terrorists.

He is brought in to advise and help with the recovery of the VX gas Hummel is using and eventually he is informed he will be assisting in the recovery as well.

But Goodspeed and his team don't have a good way to get onto Alcatraz island without being detected. Therefore they are forced to use a man who knows the prison walls of Alcatraz better than anybody else, because he had escaped from those walls 30 years prior.

Enter Sean freaking Connery as Captain John Patrick Mason, a former British military and intelligence operative who has been locked away in American prisons for years.

Mason is a master escape artist and you see that exemplified in this movie. He is also a fighter and is skilled many ways to kill a man.

In essence, he's the absolute opposite of Cage's character in this movie.

And man is it good to see Sean Connery again. Its even better seeing him in a role that isn't either James Bond or Indiana Jone's father. I can't say I'm overly familiar with all of Connery's filmography besides Hunt for Red October, but damn is the guy entertaining. At first I didn't think I could take him seriously, but the guy is just charismatic and entertaining that it just made me sad that he's retired now and probably will never be in another movie again.

Goodspeed and the US government strike a deal with Mason that if he helps them capture the VX gas and the missiles from the terrorists, he will be freed from captivity. A deal however that Goodspeed's highers do not intend to fulfill.

So its Cage, and Connery and a team of FBI special agents against Ed Harris and his team of renegade Marines.

Now with any movie starring Nic Cage, you're going to expect him to give an over the top performance with some great lines and awkward delivery.

And don't get me wrong, there are plenty of those lines in this movie and they are hilarious.

Oddly enough though, Cage isn't the most ridiculous part of this movie. The plot is. Fighting terrorists on Alcatraz with Sean Connery is a phenomenally ridiculous plot and with the incredibly over the top action and needless explosions of Michael Bay, its really kind of amazing that it actually balances out the performance of Cage. So much that it works perfectly in fact.

This movie is just a perfect storm of ridiculousness and over the top action that it actually makes this movie perfect.

Now its by no means a perfect movie. There are a lot of dumb lines, stories that are never really fleshed out, and contrived formulas that we've seen in every action movie ever made, but this movie just capitalizes on all of that that its really damn entertaining.

If you can think of a cliche used in every single action movie, its probably used in this one. There's the quippy one liners. There's the never ending ammunition that comes out of no where. There's the countdown on the bomb before it blows up. Everything I mentioned from my review of The Peacemaker is in this movie and yet I think the majority of action movie fans will say this movie is a lot better than that one.

This movie came out before 9/11. Now I feel like I always bring up 9/11 when it comes to movies like this but the fact of the matter is, you don't see terrorism in movies treated like this anymore. You don't have an over the top action film like this anymore and I'm wondering if that ended up hurting Michael Bay's career before it even got started. Because I'll say it, this is a situation where Michael Bay's style is needed and works really well.

This and Bad Boys are probably the only good Michael Bay movies that I can think of and its a shame because there are parts of Michael Bay's style that is really good. I was listening to a podcast the other day that said that Michael Bay isn't a person who doesn't care about movies, he just cares about different aspects of movies than other directors. For Michael Bay, an explosion needs to look perfect or the movie is shot. I'm sure he cares about other aspects, but that is an important part for him whereas another director might not see it that way.

13 Hour: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi is coming out this month and the funny part is, I want this movie to succeed. This movie has the potential to tell a really interesting story about Benghazi, an event that is still fresh in peoples memories. It also has the possibility of being a really good war movie. I remember when I watched the trailer I was getting super excited about this movie...

Until I saw the words, Directed by Michael Bay.

Its kind of amazing how that meant something in the 90s but now it has a horrible connotation that floors me from all the awesome visuals I see in the trailer and think, while this movie looks awesome, its directed by Michael Bay... it has the potential to really suck as well.

Now I realize that I've really gone on a tangent on a totally different movie when I probably could have said more about The Rock, but the truth is, its hard to review a movie this ridiculous. I could say the performances are over the top but I would have to ask, what did you expect? Its a Michale Bay film with Nic Cage, Sean Connery and terrorists on Alcatraz. Its kind of a hard movie to seriously say bad things about when it is not exactly a movie that is supposed to be taken that seriously.

Is it as memorable as Die Hard. No I don't think so. I might watch it again soon to really pick up on all the aspects of it I liked, but for now I would say that while its ridiculous, its probably just as forgettable as The Peacemaker because of how by the numbers of an action film it is. I liked all the actors involved and this movie is fun to watch in 2016 because you see everything that it inspired in the 10 years since its release. But overall, The Rock is an entertaining movie. Not groundbreaking, just entertaining.

But those are my thoughts on The Rock. What do you think of this movie? Can you think of a more ridiculous plot and set up? Comment and Discuss in the comments below! You can also send me your thoughts via Twitter @cmhaugen24 and send me your requests for movies I should review in the future. If you follow me you can get updates on future movies new and reviews coming from this blog as well as live tweets I do from time to time when I'm watching movies at home.

I'll leave you with this. Since I talked a lot about 13 Hours, here's the trailer. Let me know what you think. Enjoy!

For some reason I couldn't get the video linked. I'll work on that