#42: The Rock
Release Date: June 7th, 1996
Format: Criterion Collection on DVD
Written by: Douglas S. Cook, Mark Rosner, and David Weisberg
Directed by: Michael Bay
4 Stars
This is Hollywood at its absolute best. Big movie stars in big roles. Spectacular sets, both on location and in studio. An immense budget for all aspects of the photography. And a general sense of adventure and risk-taking. The producers, Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer, push all their chips in.
A Hans Zimmer score and a seemingly 1,000 piece orchestra: Check.
Dozens of enormous explosions and action set pieces: Check.
Outside of Will Smith, the fastest rising movie star of 1996: Check.
An all-time HOF character actor as the antagonist: Check.
James Bond: Check
An iconic, beautiful, expensive, tragic, problematic shooting location: Check.
It’s difficult for me to assess this movie succinctly. I suppose I’ll break my thoughts up into four parts.
Part One: Ed Harris
It’s arguable whether or not Ed Harris gives the best performance in the picture. I’m not sure. Maybe. But it is the best part. Harris plays Brigadier General Francis Hummel, and it’s an incredibly nuanced character for such a seemingly simple action plot. He’s a patriotic, dedicated, loyal soldier who threatens to kill millions of people. And as you’re watching the movie, you kind of get it. He’s got a point.
And there are very few actors in 1996 who could believably convey this character. Harris is one of them. He has the fit, conservative look of a career military man and he walks it like he talks it. I don’t know anything about Navy Seals or military-speak, but while watching the audio commentary on the Criterion DVD, I learned that he worked shoulder-to-shoulder with a former Navy Seal, Harry Humphries, to get the slang and mentality of the character accurate. The work Harris puts into getting this character right shows. It’s a great performance.
Part Two: Nicolas Cage
I remember reading a Rolling Stone interview with Ethan Hawke years ago, at least ten, and the interviewer asked Hawke who his favorite actor is. Ethan Hawke said it was Nicolas Cage, and then had to defend his choice because the interviewer couldn’t take him seriously. Ten years ago, Nicolas Cage was making direct-to-DVD dramas and action movies, seemingly because he owed the IRS significant amounts of money in back taxes. He was taking on whatever scripts came his way, and his days as a leading man in big budget Hollywood movies was long over with.
So why in the world did Hawke love Nicolas Cage?
According to Hawke, Cage is the only mainstream Hollywood actor who is not working in the naturalistic style. When 99% of Hollywood actors read a script, their main objective is to understand the character enough in order to deliver their lines in a way that sounds believable. Believability is the goal. Nicolas Cage is not concerned with such things. He is working emotionally, almost musically, in order to convey his character. He hits minor notes, and brings in elements that you aren’t expecting. That old cliche of the real world being stranger than the movies (“You can’t write this stuff”) doesn’t seem to apply to Cage. He is that strange and at times brilliant.
Part Three: Sean Connery
He’s singularly the best actor for this part. There’s a presence that some actors have that can’t be taught, and along with his history of playing James Bond, it’s perfect casting. You can’t really imagine any other actor in the role.
Part Four: Alcatraz
So the reason D and I watched this movie tonight was because we just returned from a vacation to the Bay area and we toured Alcatraz. It’s an amazing tour. And after getting over my disgust that she had not seen The Rock, we decided to watch it when we got home. Now, I saw The Rock when it came out back in 1996 and I’ve seen it at least a dozen times since then, but this is all prior to actually being on (in?) Alcatraz. Sitting down to watch it at home, I wasn’t really sure if those shots were actually in the prison. Were there just a handful of establishing helicopter shots and the rest was studio sets?
Thankfully, no. A huge portion of the scenes are in (on?) Alcatraz and it really, really helps the weight and mise en scene of the film. The concrete walls and steel bars feel heavy. The lead paint is actually peeling from one hundred years of salt water and sea wind.
It’s a former Civil War fort and maximum security federal prison, and no set designer is talented enough to capture that realism.
The Rock is a bold, big budget, risk-taking Hollywood blockbuster. As exciting and fun as it is, it’s also bittersweet if you’re an action film fan. Which financiers and producers today are going to shoot on location in places like downtown San Francisco and Alcatraz? It’s not financially viable. Just shoot exteriors on a sunny day in Vancouver and green screen the rest.
