The Movies That Moved Me: Michael Bay’s THE ROCK
Easily one of the most digestible action films of my mid-teens, Buena Vista Pictures Distribution’s The Rock was a different kind of film for me compared to what I’d already been used to from other directors. Bay’s direction is the kind that keeps nearly everything moving, whether its the camera, or the dialogue, and with scripts that pop off the pages in ways that make characters stick.
To this, the fact that Nicolas Cage was cast opposite the late Sean Connery for what reportedly should have been an Arnold Schwarzenegger headliner is what makes The Rock precisely the kind of happy accident it is. The action is especially fun to watch for anyone who gets a thrill out of kinetic and explosive shoot ’em ups with zingers in between.
Ed Harris lends one of the most empathetic villainous roles to action cinema history in my lifetime as Hummel, a disgraced brigadier general now resorting to mercenary and terroristic tactics to hold the government accountable for past grievances suffered by the families of his fallen men. This energy carries explicitly well throughout the film whether its the pivotal shower room scene, his eventual confrontation with former SAS captain Mason (Connery), and the “Mexican standoff” with his own men toward the film’s climax.
The only other thing I can really say that measures in the same way is Cage’s acting, and the ubiquitous mixture of bravado and gravitas he brings to the table as Goodspeed, a dorky FBI chemist unassuming enough that he wouldn’t harm a flea, but adaptable to the fluctuating conditions as a paper-pusher thrust into high-speed car chases, gunfire, and fisticuffs with soldiers all to save the hostages on Alcatraz Island. That, and to get back to his fiance for reasons…well…
Head over to JustWatch for all available legal streaming options.
