FBI chemist Stanley Goodspeed and an ex-con, former British spy, John Patrick Mason must lead the counterstrike when a rogue group of military men, led by a renegade general, threaten a nerve gas attack from Alcatraz against San Francisco.
As relentlessly dumb and implausible as the Die Hard movies but even more entertaining, this loud and violent action film profits greatly from the galvanizing presence of Connery.
The Rock is far from the worst movie that Bay's made, but given its roster of impressive performers and promising opening hour, it might just the ADD-afflicted filmmaker's most disappointing.
You might need to take Dramamine before entering a Michael Bay movie. The one-time music-video director has an annoying habit of finding the tightest shots, editing the heck out of them and scoring the works to loud music.
Neither as cartoonish as Con Air, nor as sentimental as Armageddon, this most satisfying of blockbuster movies deserves further kudos for establishing Nicolas Cage as one of Hollywood's unlikeliest action heroes.
The borrowings from other movies, going all the way back to the car chase in 1968's Bullitt, are heavy. But Bay has three leads to lend weight and dimension to characters who are hardly original and flatly written.
The movie's best asset is the old-fashioned, buddy-movie interplay between Cage and Connery - Cage as the frantic, white-collar lab technician who doesn't like guns, Connery as the weathered, resourceful old pro.
The filmmakers got suckered by their own high-tech effects, turning a potentially clever entertainment into yet another barrage of violence, vulgarity, and excess.
Connery and Cage are a compelling team and redeem the film from ruin despite the mechanical plot, an excessive body count and a miraculous recovery (you'll know it when you see it).
There isn't a shot, scene or sequence in The Rock that doesn't move furiously, typically with colored lights flashing into our faces or onto those of the actors.
