STORY STUDY - CRITERION WEEK - 108. “The Rock”

I looked all over my collection of stories that involved being on an island just so I can thematically or even just vaguely be related to this month’s Criterion Week.

That’s right, we’re talking about the 90s action classic, The Rock.

Directed by Michael Bay, screenplay by David Weisberg & Douglas S. Cook and Mark Rosner, and story by Weisberg & Cook, the film is about a group of rogue U.S. Force Recon Marines who take over Alcatraz Island, the former location of the Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary (a.k.a. “the Rock”) where it becomes their base of operations. They are led by Brigadier General Francis X. Hummel, who has become disillusioned with how the United States government for not compensating the families of fallen soldiers on classified missions.

In their possession are 81 hostages, and M55 rockets armed with VX gas. If just one of them hits the ground, it’ll result in high casualties.

Hummel holds the hostages and the city of San Francisco for a ransom of $100 million, which he instructs the government that the money be withdrawn from a military slush fund.

The Pentagon and the FBI plan to storm Alcatraz using Navy SEALS. Accompanying them is the FBI’s top chemist weapon specialist Stanley Goodspeed, and a British national named John Mason, a federal prisoner who’s been held without charges for the past 30 years. Mason is also the only Alcatraz inmate who has ever escaped the island.

Both Goodspeed and Mason have their own motivations in stopping the rockets from launching into San Francisco: Goodspeed having a pregnant girlfriend, and Mason having an estranged daughter.

So here’s something we haven’t seen from Michael Bay in a long time: compelling characters. Not from Goodspeed or Mason, their motivations for doing this dangerous mission are very clear. No, the complex character comes from Hummel.

From the start, Hummel makes it clear his goal his noble, but his tactics are very much the opposite. Throughout the film, he demonstrates that he is not a monster: he prevents any children from being hostages when they and the adults are taking a tour of Alcatraz, he gives the Navy SEALS ample opportunity to surrender, and one other scene in the third act that I won’t go into because of spoilers. He even plans to distribute the ransom money to be distributed to the family of fallen Recon Marines. It’s the kind of villain character that needs to be present in more actions movies.

How about the action? Come on! This is mid-nineties Michael Bay action scenes. Of course there’re gunfights and explosions all over the place... which is the slight problem I have.

To be clear, the gunfights in this film are shot and executed very well. Our main characters have to cleverly use their surroundings to gain the upper hand against the highly-trained Marines.

Really, the only issue with the film is a slight pacing issue. When Mason is being prepped for his mission, he escapes the FBI, steals a car, and goes to meet up with his daughter who he has never met. What follows is a long car chase in San Francisco, where he’s being chased by Goodspeed. It’s a cool scene, but ultimately a pointless one, since it has nothing to do with the overall plot. It also doesn’t help that at the start of the scene, there’s an offensive gay character, very stereotypical in his mannerisms.

I would’ve been very young when this film came out, so I didn’t see it until I was much older. In fact, you could say my experience with Michael Bay films have been to watch his latest films and slowly going backwards to his first films. I was aware that The Rock was supposedly his best work, and after watching it, it’s hard to disagree. It has the right kind of fun, and has characters that are little more on the deeper side.