The Rock

The last film produced by Don Simpson, The Rock follows mild-mannered chemist Stanley Goodspeed (Nicolas Cage) as he’s forced to team up with a hardened criminal (Sean Connery’s John Patrick Mason) after armed terrorists take hostages on Alcatraz Island – with the situation exacerbated by said terrorists’ threats to deploy missiles armed with a deadly toxin. It’s fairly surprising to note that The Rock gets off to an impressively watchable start, as director Michael Bay infuses the film’s first half with a briskly-paced and irresistibly larger-than-life sensibility – with the atmosphere of go-for-broke entertainment heightened by the solid work from Cage and Connery. (It doesn’t hurt, either, that the supporting cast has been peppered with a whole host of familiar faces, including David Morse, John Spencer, Tony Todd, and, as the movie’s scenery-chewing villain, Ed Harris.) The movie also benefits from the presence of several impressively suspenseful sequences and interludes, as Bay does a nice job of eliciting a fair deal of tension out of the characters’ ongoing attempts at handling the aforementioned toxin. As is typical with Bay’s cinematic endeavors, however, The Rock inevitably reaches a point at which it begins to pummel the viewer with its relentless action and over-the-top explosions – with the film’s climactic stretch consequently transformed into a tedious slog that’s almost entirely lacking in anything resembling thrills or excitement. 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.

** out of ****