The Rock
Paranoia theme overplayed in season's biggest disappointment.
How do you follow up your Oscar-winning act? If you're Nicolas Cage, you team up with a highly respected superstar (Sean Connery, also an Oscar-winner) and take a back seat to things that go boom.At least that's what Cage has done in "The Rock," which seems to have been founded on the philosophy that no one should be killed with a single shot when a barrage of bullets will do, and that you can't have too many fireballs or broken windows.
It's kind of sad to see actors of Cage and Connery's caliber take on roles that wouldn't tax the acting muscles of Steven Seagal. Mostly, they're required to pose for the director's favorite camera angle — aiming up from the ground, so that the stars' constantly flaring nostrils get all the close-ups.
And close-ups is what "The Rock" is all about. Director Michael Bay — who did the equally irritating "Bad Boys" and loads of Clio-winning commercials — shoots a jittery San Francisco car chase with so many close-ups that the audience will be hard-pressed to figure out what the heck is happening.
Did Bay think that this big-budget, star-laden Disney summer movie was going straight to video?
Connery gets top billing (and a co-executive producer credit) in this grotesquely violent paranoia thriller, as John Patrick Mason, a federal prisoner whose identity has been erased (by Arnold Schwarzenegger, perhaps?)
He's also the only prisoner to ever successfully escape from Alcatraz, so his expertise at traversing the maze of tunnels below the infamous prison is needed when outraged Gen. Francis Xavier Hummel (Ed Harris) takes over the island with a troop of psychotic Marines.
Hummel also takes 81 civilian tourists hostage, then threatens to kill off everyone in San Francisco with four rockets armed with a deadly nerve gas unless his demands are met. Hummel wants money for families of soldiers who died in covert combat missions — families who have been denied benefits.
Meanwhile, mild-mannered FBI chemical wizard Stanley Goodspeed (Cage), is brought in to disarm the rockets. And, naturally, he and Mason become a reluctant dynamic duo once they land at Alcatraz.
Eventually, Mason tries to show Hummel the futility of his quest: "I don't see how you cherish the memory of the dead by killing another million." That's obvious from the film's opening scene, and by commenting on it late in the movie, the filmmakers simply acknowledge their contempt for the audience, as if to say, "We know it's stupid, but we also know you'll buy it."
And even if Hummel does see the error of his ways, he's surrounded himself with too many kill-for-the-thrill wacko Marines to turn back.
"The Rock" may be most notable, however, for carrying the familiar government-paranoia theme to its zenith. Everyone is so corrupt and evil in this film — except Mason and Goodspeed, of course — that you may leave the theater with thoughts of moving to another, safer country. Say, Bosnia.
Truth be told, Cage, Connery and Harris all seem to be trying to make more out of this than is possible. Cage does a reprisal of his repressed Secret Service agent from "Guarding Tess," Connery is his usual stoic self — even when playing an out-of-touch ruthless killer (and in the film's early stages, he manipulates his captors as if he's Hannibal Lecter) — and Harris is a misguided but sincere patriot.
All three attempt some subtle touches here and there, trying to give their characters some modicum of depth. (Other stalwart and familiar character actors who join them include Michael Biehn, Tony Todd, William Forsythe, John C. McGinley, David Morse and John Spencer.)
But director Bay will have none of that — he's quickly on to the next spray of gunfire and shattered glass, trying to outdo any other summer pictures that may be competing for the biggest, the loudest or the most destructive.
By the time Cage says, late in the film, "OK, that's just about the most awful thing I've ever seen," the audience should be ready to agree.
The season's biggest disappointment so far, "The Rock" is rated R for considerable violence, some gore, wall-to-wall profane and vulgar language and a sex scene.