The Rock (film)
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The Rock is an action movie released on Friday, June 7, 1996 that primarily takes place on Alcatraz Island, and in the San Francisco Bay area. The movie stars Sean Connery, Nicolas Cage, and Ed Harris.
Plot outline
In the film, John Patrick Mason (Connery) is a British spy imprisoned for stealing microfilm that contained U.S. government secrets, such as the identity of John F. Kennedy's assassin. He also was the only person to ever escape from Alcatraz, although he was later recaptured. Afterwards he was locked in another maximum security prison, and any evidence of his existence was erased. All of this was partly orchestrated by James Womack (John Spencer), the devious FBI agent who is now the bureau director.Years later, Marine Brigadier General Francis X. Hummel (Ed Harris), disgruntled by the way the government abandoned many of his men, assembles a rogue team of elite U.S. Marines (Force Recon) in an attempt to occupy Alcatraz Island, taking a group of tourists hostage in the process. Hummel threatens to kill all of San Francisco's population with VX gas missiles unless the government agrees to pay money to the families of American commandos lost in classified operations throughout the world, and also to him and his men.
Mason, as the only man ever to escape from Alcatraz, is the only one who can guide Dr. Stanley Goodspeed (Cage), an FBI chemical weapons specialist educated at Columbia (B.A.) and Johns Hopkins (M.A. and Ph.D.) with limited field experience, and a team of U.S. Navy SEALs through the catacombs underneath the island to neutralize the threat.
Goodspeed and Mason soon find out that they are the only ones left between Hummel's VX gas rockets and San Francisco after their team is met and killed by Hummel's forces. The men are forced to work together with Goodspeed's knowledge of the rockets and Mason's knowledge of the prison.
Cast and crew
- John Patrick Mason - Sean Connery
- Dr. Stanley Goodspeed - Nicolas Cage
- Brig. Gen. Francis X. Hummel - Ed Harris
- FBI Director James Womack - John Spencer
- Maj. Tom Baxter - David Morse
- Special Agent Ernest Paxton - William Forsythe
- Cmdr. Anderson - Michael Biehn
- Carla Pestalozzi - Vanessa Marcil
- Capt. Hendrix - John C. McGinley
- Capt. Frye - Gregory Sporleder
- Capt. Darrow - Tony Todd
- Directed by: Michael Bay
- Produced by: Jerry Bruckheimer, Don Simpson
- Written by: David Weisberg, Douglas Cook, Mark Rosner
- Screenplay by: David Weisberg, Douglas Cook
- Original music by: Nick Glennie-Smith, Hans Zimmer, Harry Gregson Williams
Trivia
- VX is in actuality not a blister agent, and does not melt the skin as seen in this film. Indeed, real blister agents do not have nearly as spectacular effects as depicted. VX does, however, cause loss of muscle control and convulsions that do eventually lead to asphyxiation.
- The line "I'll take pleasure in guttin' you, boy" is a reference to the 1979 Clint Eastwood film Escape from Alcatraz.
- On the commentary track for the Criterion Collection release, director Michael Bay had said that after shooting one day, Disney executives had shown up on set to take a meeting with Bay. Not particularly excited at the prospect of this meeting, Bay was ready to leave the set when he was approached by Sean Connery who had shown up in his golfing attire. Connery asked Bay where he was going and Bay told him that he was going to a meeting with Disney executives, which prompted Connery to ask Bay if he wanted him to accompany him. Bay complied and when he had arrived in the conference room, the executives' jaws dropped when they saw Connery appear right behind him. According to Bay, Connery stood up for Bay and insisted that he was doing a good job and should be left to do his job.
- In the hotel suite, the song "Leaving on a Jet Plane" can be heard in the background while Mason gets a haircut. This is the same song that the astronauts in Armageddon (also a Bay/Bruckheimer movie) sing before boarding their shuttles. The unnamed President of the United States is also played by the same actor (Stanley Anderson) in both films.
- Sean Connery's reply when Goodspeed introduces himself is, "But of course you are." This is the reply Connery as James Bond gives to Plenty O'Toole when she introduces herself in Diamonds Are Forever (1971). It's also the reply Connery gives in Rising Sun (1993) when a threatening bodyguard tells him he's a black-belt. This line is also used by Clancy Brown as The Kurgan, in the movie Highlander (1986) which also featured Sean Connery.
- The video game borrowed some basic plot elements from this movie. Similar details include an underwater infiltration of a waterlogged fortress taken hostage by a former US military team gone rogue. The main character, a rookie with no combat experience, must ally with a shady master commando with his own agenda to defuse explosive devices located all over the structure after a US SEAL team gets wiped out. Harry Gregson Williams was also invited to produce the game's sound track.
- A scenario is also included in video game in which terrorists have taken hostages on Alcatraz Island.
- According to a docent on Alcatraz Island (December, 2005), during filming of scenes with the hostages, the famous sliding doors wouldn't open. Help from the mainland had to be sought and the extras were stuck for several hours. For this reason, visitors are no longer allowed to be temporarily shut in.
- The line Nicholas Cage uses while holding a VX chemical round, "You shoot me, I drop this, and we're both dead", was said again in the film National Treasure (2004) while Cage stands around barrels of gunpowder with a lit flare in his hand.
- The computer game : Yuri's Revenge features a cutscene in which a number of American fighter planes fly by the Golden Gate Bridge and attack Alcatraz Island, just like in this movie.
- The movie is dedicated to producer Don Simpson who died before the release of the movie.
- Quentin Tarantino was an uncredited screenwriter on The Rock (1996), along with Jonathan Hensleigh and Aaron Sorkin.
- Sean Connery insisted the producers build a cabin for him on Alcatraz as he didn't want to travel from the mainland to the island every day; he got what he asked for.
- Most of the scenes involving F/A-18s are stock footage of the U.S. Navy Blue Angels.
- Gregory Sporleder and Tony Todd, the actors who played the real "villains" of the film, both had one episode guest spots on the television series 24.
External links
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