The Rock (film)

The Rock
Directed by	Michael Bay
Produced by	Jerry Bruckheimer Don Simpson Louis A. Stroller Sean Connery William Stuart
Written by	Story & Screenplay: David Weisberg Douglas S. Cook Screenplay: Mark Rosner Uncredited: Quentin Tarantino[1]
Starring	Sean Connery Nicolas Cage Ed Harris
Music by	Nick Glennie-Smith Hans Zimmer Harry Gregson-Williams
Editing by	Richard Francis-Bruce
Distributed by	Hollywood Pictures
Release date(s)	June 7, 1996 (U.S.) June 7, 1996 (Canada) June 21, 1996 (UK) July 26, 1996 (Australia)
Running time	136 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	US$75 million
Gross revenue	$335,062,621 (worldwide)

The Rock is a 1996 Academy Award-nominated action film 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. It was produced by Don Simpson/Jerry Bruckheimer Films and released through Disney's Hollywood Pictures. The film is dedicated to producer Don Simpson, who died five months before its release.

Plot

A group of rogue Marines from Force Recon, led by a disenfranchised Brigadier General, Francis X. Hummel (Ed Harris), seize a stockpile of rockets armed with VX Nerve Agent, a modern chemical weapon of nightmarish virulence and the capability to withstand consumption by napalm, the standard countermeasure to chemical weapons.

The Marines take over Alcatraz Island during a guided tour, taking 81 tourists hostage in the prison cells. Hummel calls the Pentagon and the FBI Director, informing them of his intentions: he will launch the lethal VX gas rockets over the population of the San Francisco Bay Area unless reparations of $1 million are paid to each of the families of Marines who died under his command in covert operations within 40 hours. His grievances have mainly to do with the government's refusal to pay due compensation to the families. As Hummel has been previously told, compensation would acknowledge the Marine died on active duty, tacitly sanctioning official government approval their activities, even though they were illegal. He is nevertheless determined to carry out his mission.

The Pentagon and FBI officials decide to deploy a Navy SEAL team to retake the island and free Hummel's hostages by stealth. In need of first-hand knowledge of the underground tunnels of Alcatraz, they are forced to release the imprisoned John Patrick Mason(Sean Connery): the only inmate of Alcatraz who had, reputedly, ever successfully escaped. FBI chemical weapons expert Dr. Stanley Goodspeed (Nicolas Cage) — socially nerdy and bumbling — is also recruited, to neutralize the VX gas threat. The two men and the SEAL team commence their raid on Alcatraz. Meanwhile, the Pentagon prepares a secondary countermeasure to Hummel's VX gas rockets: readying prototype "thermite plasma" bombs capable of incinerating the poison gas, but which will also kill any person left on the island.

FBI director James Womack (John Spencer) and his West Coast subordinate Ernest Paxton (William Forsythe) direct the SEAL incursion via helmet monitors. Soon after getting onto the island, the SEALs are discovered by the Marines and trapped in a bottleneck. During a tense exchange between Hummel and Anderson (Michael Biehn), the SEALs' commander, the Sailors are startled and open fire on the Marines. Surrounded and weakly positioned (on lower ground without cover) the SEALs are quickly dispatched, leaving only Goodspeed and Mason alive. Paxton demands to abort the mission, believing there is no way for Mason and Goodspeed to succeed on their own. Womack then reveals Mason's history as a former British SAS officer, ordered by his government to steal J. Edgar Hoover's files, covering nearly every US state secret from the alien landings at Roswell to the JFK assassination. Captured at the Canadian border thirty years earlier, he has been held without trial ever since for refusing to give back the files. Womack hopes Mason's anger and training will be enough to see the mission through.

Mason and Goodspeed repeatedly battle small groups of Marines to great effect, and as the night wears on, they manage to remove the guidance chips from thirteen of the fifteen missiles, until finally they are captured close to dawn and left unguarded in holding cells. Mason frees them both with only an hour and two missiles remaining.

Meanwhile, the thermite-plasma weapons are readied, and armed F-18s begin to approach Alcatraz ready to blanket the island, destroying the chemical weapons and killing the hostages. The deadline passes and the Pentagon calls Hummel and refuses to pay the ransom. Consequently, the Marines fire one of the two remaining rockets at a football game, but Hummel redirects the missile at the last minute to detonate harmlessly at sea. Having balked at launching against civilian targets, Hummel reveals the nerve gas threat to be a bluff. The Marines loyal to Hummel agree to end the stand-off, but the more mercenary-type Marines, hired only for this mission, decide fire the remaining missile and a short gun-battle ensues, in which Hummel and his loyalists are shot dead, with Goodspeed and Mason looking on. In his dying breath, Hummel tells Goodspeed the location of the last rocket.

While Mason battles the traitorous Marines, Goodspeed heads away to disarm the last rocket. After extracting the VX from the rocket, Goodspeed is attacked by the last remaining Marine. Outmatched, Goodspeed uses the VX to kill the Marine by forcing it right into the Marine's mouth, thus causing his body to deteriorate slowly. Goodspeed then forcefully injects an antidote (atropine) into his own heart to save himself. Weakened, he desperately scrambles to the shore to signal to the command center to abort the airstrike, which would needlessly kill many hostages. However, the abort command is received too late by the pilots, and one accidentally drops the first of its thermite-plasma payload onto the island. Fortunately, the bomb misses the hostages' cell block, and only throws Goodspeed to the water, where he is promptly rescued by Mason. When the FBI arrive to secure Alcatraz, Goodspeed informs them that Mason was "vaporized" hence releasing him to freedom, anonymity, and his estranged daughter—equipped with SCUBA gear, and the keys to a hotel room in San Francisco complete with clothes and money. Before his departure, however, Mason had passed on the location of the secret microfilm which had caused his incarceration, and the movie closes with Goodspeed and his pregnant wife Carla recovering the microfilm, along with half a century of state secrets.

Cast

Actor	Role	Notes	Character Photo
Sean Connery	SAS Captain John Patrick Mason:
Nicolas Cage	FBI Agent Dr. Stanley Goodspeed:
Ed Harris	USMC Brigadier General Francis X. Hummel:
John Spencer	FBI Director James Womack:
David Morse	USMC Major Tom Baxter:
William Forsythe	FBI Special Agent Ernest Paxton:
Michael Biehn	US Navy SEAL Commander Anderson:
Vanessa Marcil	Carla Pestalozzi:
John C. McGinley	USMC Captain Hendrix:
Tony Todd	USMC Captain Darrow:
Gregory Sporleder	USMC Captain Frye:
Bokeem Woodbine	USMC Sergeant Crisp:
Claire Forlani	Jade Angelou:
James Caviezel	Pilot:	Uncredited

Box office

Produced at a budget of US$75mil, the movie was a smash hit, grossing a total of $134,069,511 in the United States and $200,993,110 elsewhere, 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.^[2]

Production

Quentin Tarantino was an uncredited screenwriter on The Rock,^[1] along with Jonathan Hensleigh and Aaron Sorkin^{[citation needed]}. 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.^{[citation needed]} The car chase was not in the original script; it was Michael Bay's idea.^{[citation needed]} 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 director to keep the butthole line, but he agreed to deliver the lines "Do you know how this shit works!" and "Eat that, you fuck!" as swearing is a staple of the action genre, and to show how the mission had changed Goodspeed.^{[citation needed]}

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.

According to a document on Alcatraz Island (December, 2005)^{[citation needed]}, 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.^[3]

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 a shot of Mason shooting Gamble's feet and a close-up of his screaming face as the air conditioner falls, a sound cut to Mason snapping a Marine's neck and a bloody gunshot wound, 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.

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 is the only Michael Bay film to have been given a "fresh" rating (66%) on Rotten Tomatoes.

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, 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."^[4]

References

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:

The Rock (film)

• The Rock at the Internet Movie Database
• The Rock at Rotten Tomatoes
• Criterion Collection essay by Roger Ebert

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