The Rock, the version starring Nicholas Cage, Sean Connery and Ed Harris is at first glance a basic action movie of the 90's.

The movie opens with a military funeral alternating with shots of Brigadier General Francis X Hummell dressing in Marine dress uniform. A brief monologue from Hummell hints that he feels that there has been an injustice and he is addressing a Senator and the Joint Chiefs. Then there is a shot of Hummell visiting the grave of his wife who it seems has died still fairly young. He says that he has tried to make 'them' understand, but what he is about to do is something he couldn't do while his wife was still alive. After that, he leaves a medal on her grave that IIRC is the Congressional Medal of Honor which is the highest military decoration that can be awarded in the USA. Afterwards there is an attack on a US Naval Weapons storage depot where canisters of VX Gas and missiles are seized. The attack has taken place while Hummell is on an inspection apparently but he is in on the plan, in fact it was him who organised it.

Hummell later seizes hostages at the abandoned fortress prison of Alcatraz and organizes. He makes demands to the white house that he wishes compensation for the families of the men killed under his command in various 'Black ops', their deaths having went unmentioned, no medals or compensation having been paid to the families. To back up his demands, he threatens that he will launch missiles containing VX gas to targets in the San Francisco bay area.

To counter this, Stanley Goodspeed played by Nicholas Cage, an FBI chemical weapons expert is strongarmed into helping to counter this problem. Along with a convict, John Patrick Mason played by Connery who it is later found out was an ex SAS member who is the only man known to have escaped Alcatraz and a Navy SEALS team, they are to infiltrate the prison and disarm the missiles before the deadline.

Okay, if anyone wants to add to the brief rundown, feel free.

Points to make.

Ed Harris turns in a powerful and sympathetic performance as Hummell. Although cast as a villain, the General is someone you can feel sympathy for. He feels his men have been betrayed.

Major Baxter, played by David Morse is his world weary XO who also seems to staunchly believe in the Generals cause. The main sticking point are the younger more 'gung ho' members of his team, especially Captains Frye and Darrow who seem to be in this more for the money and the joy of killing. This eagerness in fact seems to finally sway Hummell from firing the rockets.

Connery as usual turns in a good performance with some good lines.

Cage in my mind seems rather weedy for the part, but he IS not a military man, and this is most likely an intentional part of the casting.

Comments?

Boy, for a guy who spend all his time in a lab, ol' Stanley sure knows how to handle himself in a car chase, huh?

Did anyone else think that Captains Frye and Darrow did more to hinder General Hummell than help him?

For example in the shower room sequence, Hummell was still talking to the SEAL team and who knows what could have happened, but noooo, that pair of lunatics had to go pyscho.

John Spencer who plays FBI Director Womack is an accomplished actor who has appeared in many films and TV shows, he sticks out for me for his role in the video game Wing Commander 4:The Price of Freedom as Captain Hugh Paulsen, and his role in The West Wing as Leo McGarry.

He also played Tommy Mullaney on LA Law.

It has to be said that one of the messages in this film seems to be both the legitimacy of so called 'black ops', and the consequences arising from them. I do realise however, this is not a USA only position, all governments, at least of any real significance will perform similiar operations to some degree.

Did anyone else think that Captains Frye and Darrow did more to hinder General Hummell than help him?

I totally agree, but when you are tryting to find US Marines who are willing to steal WMDs, take American's hostage and possibly kill fellow soldiers and/or nerve gas a city you take what you can get.

>>Boy, for a guy who spend all his time in a lab, ol' Stanley sure knows how to handle himself in a car chase, huh?

A lot of the movie was unrealistic, but whether those producers'/writers' decisions are nits or not is another story.

FBI agents are federal cops, period. Any FBI agent *always* carries a pistol while working and qualifies with it regularly. FBI weapons qualifications are more difficult than local cops' and he'd be reasonably good with a pistol.

While it's possible that an FBI cop would have a Ph.D. in chemistry or whatever, it's more likely that the FBI's "science guy" would be a civilian, which would mean that they'd never have him come along to the Rock, which leads to the next point:

SEALs are specifically trained in stuff like this. It is exactly what they do, and they wouldn't need a chem guy's help. All they need to know is that they must not break the glass balls! They'd be perfectly capable of taking down the rockets (and the Marines). Which leads to the next...

A team of SEALs like in this movie would have no trouble taking out the Marines, and they wouldn't be stupid enough to *all* come up through the only ambush-ready room in the place. I can't offer alternatives without knowing more about the building, but they knew going in that it was a trap. One possible solution? Send in only two guys and have them look around and open other doors, clear more areas, and then call for a few more to come up and start clearing more areas.

Have you ever seen, read about, or heard about what guys like this do? It's pretty amazing, actually. A small group of commandos (SEALs, FBI SWAT guys, whatever) can run into a room and take out 2-4 times as many bad guys, often without taking any injuries. Even though the "bad guys" were U.S.-trained Marines, most of them still wouldn't have much of a chance against the guys going in, IMHO.

BTW, the marines in this movie were riciculous. Screaming (hey, here I am, shoot me!) while running, silly hair tied above one's head, etc.

This isn't to say I don't enjoy the movie. I actually do, a lot. :-)

Actually the Marines and SEALS would be pretty evenly matched. They aren't regular Marines; they were Force Recon, which is the Marine Corps own brand of specialy trained comandos.

On the DVD one of the advisors on the commentary mentions the SEALS attacking one spot on the island while the others sneak in somewhere else. I don't think that would be a good idea when the guy you are attacking is a US Marine General; he'd know that trick and might start killing hostages or fireing missles at the first sign of an attack.

Sending in a few guys in cover formation to secure the elevated position in that room and the doors before the rest of the squad comes up seems a better idea.

Great movie, Sean Connery is still the man, but of course there are critiques. I find it very hard to believe that SEALs, probably the best trained group in the world, did not kill even one Marine in that shower room. Also, why in nearly every movie with SEALs are they shown to use MP-5s? The US military in general rarely use this weapon; SEALs typically use M-4s no matter the circumstance.

It's nice of the CA Dept. of Corrections, if there was one at the time, to make all of their surfaces bulletproof. The modern 5.56mm is designed to pentrate such things so I doubt Godspell would have survived his cover behind that desk. Speaking which, is there a morgue in the actual prison?

I don't see the problem in meeting some of Hummel's demands if the money comes from an account of illegal arms sales, and possibly other federally sanctioned illegal actions. That's like robbing a bank and then not using that money to bail one of your accomplices out of jail. I wouldn't pay for the mercenary marines but the familys of black op soliders KIA.

Forgot a couple. When Hummel brought out that hostage there was eight hours until the deadline. The next scene of Mason and Goodspeed in a cell there was 52 minutes. I would imagine it took some time to get them into a cell, but would it take over six hours to tear up your mattress and break out? Also, I know Connery was the first, and best IMHO, James Bond but these Marines didn't post a guard to watch them. Mason said he was "formerly a guest here." You'd think the general would consider that he knows his way around.

A nit on the DVD case:

the pictures of the actors from left to right:
Cage, Connery, Harris

the names of the actors above those pictures left to right:
Connery, Cage, Harris
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Regarding the F/A-18 Hornet attack...

Their formation was too tight and their flight was too low to be destroying the entire island with thermite plasma. Additionally, the one pilot who releases a bomb... a bomb? if the explosion caused by the one F/A-18 Hornet was that small, even if their formation and release altitude were better, they wouldn't destroy the island with one pass. Actually, if they were attempting to destroy the island in a single pass, they'd release all their weapons at one time...
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Why is Stanely scared when Mason has stanely's gun pointed at his head right when he takes it from stanely? The safety's still on.

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Can anyone imagine what is going to happen when the public sees a massive explosion on the island in the end? Forget about paying compensation to the families, Hummel's stunt is more likely to lead to those weapons of mass destruction being removed from the U.S.A. inventory as people find out why there was an explosion.

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Of course, it was obvious that Hummel wasn't a cold blooded killer at the beginning of the movie... no cold blooded killer would make certain that none of the hostages were children.

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If several of the missiles were out in the open, why not provide that information to the SEAL team. Even if no satellites were able to look down, a TARPS equipped F-14 could get you what ever surveillance you'd need on the missiles that were in the open.

Here's at least 2 very simple but clearly legite basic continuity/production/plot oversight nits. When Cage commanderes (steals) the yellow ferrari to chase after Connery if you look closely you can see the delicate front end of the 6 figure cost ferrari never sustaining any damage as it repeatedly bottoms out and smashes nose first into the pavement. Also during this chase when Connery's character picks up the mobile cellular phone and responds to the apparent owner "om onlee borrowin yer HUMVEE", how does he know what a HUMMER/HUMVEE is if he has been (secretly) held in solitary confinement for decades on end ?

They guy on the phone said something to him about his Humvee and Mason repeated him.

I had the urge to watch this movie again and in doing so found a couple more nits.

Hummel said he was going to call the Pentagon at 0000 hours eastern time. When we get to that scene we find out it's 11:58pm. Thirty seconds later, after chief of staff Sinclar reads Hummel's file out loud, he calls. In the military there's a saying "if you're not early you're late" but that's usually around fifteen minutes not 90 seconds.

For those who don't know, VX is a real chemical, albeit over-dramatized for this movie, and the worlds largest supply is in the Newport Chemical Weapons Depot in Indiana, but is in the process of being destroyed.

The pilot who dropped his thermite plasma bombs after being told to abort probably lost his wings.

Somehow I doubt that there was a microfim copy made of the Kennedy Assassination and Roswell on the same film, and accessable enough to be stolen. Hoover was nothing if not paranoid. If there were, it was most likely one of documents and was too small to read by Godspell's magnifier.

During the helicopter flight, one of the SEALs hands Cage a srynge and explains how to use it if he comes into contact with the gas. Ummm, isn't Cage supposed to be the expert here and shouldn't he already know that?

It could be a diffenrent type of syringe that he may not be familiar with. I know some military units use different styles and the SEAL maybe just making sure he knows how to use that paticular one.

Mason said that he met his daughter's mom at a Led Zeppelin concert. Led Zeppelin didn't form until 1968. They played their first British gig in October 1968, their first U.S. concert in December 1968, and their first album was released in January 1969. Mason would have been close to, or over 40, when Led Zeppelin began touring, IMHO, too old for Led Zeppelin or any of the hard rock acts of that era. (BTW, Sean Connery was 65 when he shot this flick.)
I got a kick out of the hotel barber's line "Did you like your haircut" amid all the mayhem that went on.

No, this is not the life story of Dwayne Johnson