cinemajesty Movie Review: "The Rock" (1996)Just exiting the R-rated action-comedy "Bad Boys" (1995), Director Michael Bay took on an original screenplay by Douglas S. Cooke with ongoing support by producers Jerry Bruckheimer & Don Simpson (1943-1996) raising the budget from 55 to 75 Million Dollar in order to engage Academy-Award Winner Sean Connery as master escapist John Patrick Mason, Nicolas Cage as bio chemist Stanley Goodspeed and Ed Harris as the memorable character of U.S. General Hummel, who puts the prison island Alcatraz under siege to restore honor toward fellow Vietnam War fallen soldiers, where measures of doing the right thing turning into a area of grey, indulging the audience to consider the situation. The action scenes are of such high-visceral quality, captured in shutter speed changes, blood / guts and splintering bullets in 360 degrees views, especially in an infiltrating shoot-out scene at the sanitation bath rooms of Alcatraz.Shot on location in San Francisco and on the infamous prison island, where easy Californian living turns for the main characters into hostile life-threatening situations on urban streets, underwater, rock and stone of Alcatraz block buildings to prevent a major bio-weapon menace targeting the whole bay area. Light-hearted character Goodspeed gets turned into a combat soldier against all odds by a fully-trained Navy seals and special addition to the infiltration team portrayed by Sean Connery's interpretation of the character of Mason, creating a mystical touch to the picture of being the man, who escaped the prison island, which benefits to the entertainment levels of "The Rock", which stands out in retrospective as daring, hard-boiled and at times fair ingredients of humor in an unless serious hyper-realistic scenario of an action-thriller for the senses.Trageting the young adults with his R-rating, which came to the movies for motion picture entertainment in the summer of 1996, where the balance between 1980s live-action hardcore-boldness and 1990s digital-enhancements of visuals felt intact; a circumstance that with an inflation-cleaned-up ticket price of 2017 in comparison would bring a box office success of roundabout 670 Million Dollar at today's international box offices; due to shifts from overpriced live-action units to run fast-cheap digital effects factories a seldom kid in action cinema to come by nowadays.© 2017 Felix Alexander Dausend (Cinemajesty Entertainments LLC)

EBJ 'THE ROCK' was directed by Michael Bay, and stars Nicholas Cage, Sean Connery and Ed Harris. ​When ex US General Frank Hammel(Ed Harris) threatens to launch chemical weapons against San Fransisco from Alcatraz, the US government send in Stanley Goodspead(Nicholas Cage), a biochemist, and John Mason(Sean Connery), the only man to ever escape Alcatraz alive, to combat the general and save the city from annihilation.This is the best action movie with mediocre action. It's endlessly quotable(I found that out the hard way) and succeeds purely because of its talented cast of actors and Bay's solid direction(blasphemy, I know). Mason and Goodspeed are the driving force of this movie and elevate it from average at best, to freaking awesome. The action is passable and will please the majority of audiences but that isn't the reason to see the movie.A sentence I never figured I'd have to say when referring a Michael Bay movie is 'The story for this film is well written, concise and provides clear motivations for all its characters'. The premise of setting a movie like this on Alcatraz is genius and Bay builds a genuinely good story around that. There is a first time for everything, and this was apparently also his last.Nicholas Cage is both the best and worst actor in existence simultaneously. He's mental but mental in a way were he's not annoying like Travolta and not intentionally funny like Carrey. He's Nicholas Cage and no one can take that away from him, and that is the reason he was great in this movie as a man pushed to the brink of his sanity. Sean Connery(you just read that in his voice) clearly uses his period as Bond to sell the character of John Mason and anyone that says Mason is anything less than a freaking bad ass is kidding themselves. Ed Harris was brilliant as General Hummel and provided a layered, interesting performance. Hummel was smart, interesting and intimidating, and made a great adversary for the two leads. My main issue with the movie is an aspect of the villain. I won't spoil as to what but I figured it best to mention it, even if you don't know specifically why.The effects in this movie are atrocious but I cannot blame them for that and don't hold it against them. John Schwartzmen shoots the movie very well and the movie was also very well lit. I have issues with some of the editing but not to the point were it actively annoyed me throughout the run time. Both the set design and the costume design were pretty bland. Setting the movie on Alcatraz was genius but I feel they could have done more with the sets.The action is this movie is fine. The comedy is fine. The dialogue is good. The characters are fantastic and amazing and incredible and are the main reason I recommend you see this movie. They are all so likable and elevate the movie from good to great and for that I congratulate them. I highly recommend this movie, and I'll rate it 9 Concerned Hairdressers out of 10.

rshjaggotta This is one of the best ever action movies. Period! Watch for it for Sean Connery and it's amazing background score that will give you goosebumps. Nicholas Cage and Ed Harris give excellent support and set up one of the finest plots that sees a convict help defend a country which has done grave injustice to him

stageneral I don't look at IMDb until after I've seen a movie, but it's pretty rare that the IMDb rating is far off from what I would rate (or at least in the same general goodness or badness range). This is apparently one of those rare cases, though. I had to double check that I pulled up the right title when I saw a rating of 7.4 (at least at the time of this writing).I honestly can't understand what people see here. It's over 2 hours long, and I was watching the clock after the first hour, hoping it was getting near the end. I mean, it's a light enough action ride - I was leaning towards rating it a "5", but then the number of things that bothered me just kept mounting, and I finally decided "4" was more appropriate. Here's some of those things (I don't intend any significant spoilers, but clicked the spoiler alert just in case):The movie couldn't seem to decide whether it was a gritty war drama (lots of scowling, shooting, and F-bombs), or a slightly tongue-in-cheek action movie (comic relief characters, trying-to-be-witty dialogue). Heck, it even seemed like Nicolas Cage couldn't decide either, because he bounced back and forth between the two.Similarly, a fair amount of carnage during the shooting scenes, but Nicolas Cage and Sean Connery dove, walked, or swam away from everything, no matter how many people were shooting, or how big the explosive device, or how far their bodies were thrown.The characters were wooden and stereotypical. A flamboyant gay hair stylist? Some "Sir, yes sir!" Marines, the wronged ex-con, the never-been-in-the-field agent, the trolley driver, ...The plot was predictable and clichéThe drawn out shoot-em-up, crash-em-up sequences. I haven't seen so many cars trashed in a chase scene since the Blues Brothers. And geez, that Humvee didn't even get a broken headlight.In short, it was just one cliché scene after another, strung together over a tired and predictable story line. OK, I watched it in 2016. Maybe it was fresh in 1996 when it came out, but I find that hard to believe.