"I know something about you Godspell."
"Goodspeed..."
"Goodspeed, Godspeed, Godspell... you never went to any anti-terrorism school. So just make sure you don't get us all f***ing killed."
This is the closest you get to actual dialogue in The Rock. Dialogue that isn't cliched, self involved, one liner rhetoric, and is probably the quietest moment of the film. And yet it is all those things and more. And I love it.
Part I of the Cage Trinity (Part II being Con Air, Part III is Face/Off), The Rock is so adept at stretching into the surreal without going full on bonkers that as it rollicks along those cliches seem sharp, the self involvement endearing and the one liners cutting and cute. It's important to remember that Nicolas Cage at this point was on the verge of winning an Academy Award, and had so far been an acclaimed Dramatic Actor and Leading Man with only small ventures into Crazy Cage territory. The Cage Trinity was to seem a massive departure into what we all think of now as standard action territory, though re-watching The Rock it's surprising as to how un-action man his bioscientist Stanley Goodspeed actually is; most of the hardman talking and walking is left to senior citizen Connery and the ever intense and equally excellent Ed Harris, with Cage left to tick and nerve and dance his way around the titular rock, Alcatraz.
And he plays it very well. Sometimes it's difficult to remember how great an actor Cage actually is - and every now and again he throws out a quality performance or two, just to tell you he's still got it - and even in some of his more understated roles he still displays a natural versatility most actors can only dream of, as he does here. He and Connery bounce off each other like a pair of Disney comedy sidekicks - one scatty and intelligent, one poised and controlled - only with a lot of swearing and more guns, and their interplay is what raises the cliched, one liner dialogue above what could become tiresome becoming routinely hilarious. An example: after Connery's John Mason falls off a ledge and is left hanging upside down by a rope tied to his foot - "Mason, are you ok?"... "Of course I'm not ok you f***ing idiot". It's stupid, and obvious, yet hilarious.
As the original Bond, Connery knows how to deliver a sharp line of course, and is the central glue that holds all the other characters together, being drawn in by his brooding charisma. Ed Harris is the villain-with-a-cause, his band of not-so-merry men following his twisted justification of violence-for-a-purpose with absolute conviction. (No more oxymornonic hyphenations I promise) The supporting line is a who's who of 90's TV and movie 'actors actors', from John C. McGinley to David Morse, to faces you'll recognise but won't know their names. They all give good gusto and add extra dimensions to characters that would otherwise be considered background dressing. Kyle Reese himself, Michael Biehn, pops up, only to get *spoiler alert* massacred along with his team in a prison bathroom, an extraordinary action sequence in it's own right, and a fitting Mid-Movie Motive Mixer (TM) sending characters principles and actions into turmoil.
And there is more action and more turmoil. It's not an overly complicated narrative, but there are some twists and turns in amongst the explosions and shooting and gruff growling, and it rips along at speed. And there's sunsets, and slow motion, and shooting through walls. And crashing through windows, and fire and people shouting at each other at the same time. For at the end of the day, this is, indeed, a Michael Bay movie. Not one for subtlety it is actually surprising how restrained and, actually, occasionally, subtle Bay is. His usual tricks are all present and correct but this is Bay in his early days, when he didn't know better than to trust in the guiding hand of the great Jerry Bruckheimer and late great Don Simpson to shepherd him through his more self involved moments. At this point his only feature was the understated but ambitious Bad Boys, and though it is a step up in budget and scale The Rock still maintains some of the low key precision of his debut. Which is probably why the dialogue, acting, and storyline are actually able to share the screen with the fireworks and pyrotechnics rather than be blasted to smithereens by them.
Despite his future blockbuster billion dollar endeavors The Rock is one of, if not the, greatest Michael Bay movie, which may not be saying much to some people, but combined with being Part I of the Cage Trilogy can only be defined as a stone cold classic.
As solid as a rock.
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Featuring: Nicholas Cage, Sean Connery, Ed Harris, David Morse, Michael Biehn
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