Channel Awesome

(The Disneycember logo is shown, before showing clips from The Rock)

Doug (vo): You know, sometimes, you don't appreciate what you have until you look back on it years later? Nicolas Cage and Sean Connery in a Michael Bay movie isn't anything groundbreaking, but...by God, it's so cool. It was just this one time, we'll never have it again. And everyone was just at the point of almost becoming a satire of themselves, but they weren't really cartoons yet. They're still trying to be taken seriously, but also have fun while doing it. Even when people talk about hating Michael Bay films, they usually follow it up with, "But The Rock was pretty fun." And that's exactly what this is, a pretty fun time.

Story[]

Doug (vo): A terrorist, played by Ed Harris, has kidnapped a tour group, who was being shown around Alcatraz until they were kidnapped. He has a super cool-looking bio-weapon that, honestly, I have no idea if this thing really exists, but, man, cinematically, it looks great. It looks cool being taken out of the canisters, it's super sensitive, so when it starts rolling, you always have a fear it's going to be punctured and kill everybody. It's just cool. So obviously, they have to send in an expert on the weapon, played by Nicolas Cage, and the only living man who broke out of Alcatraz, played by Sean Connery. Yeah, I know all these people have character names, but let's face it, you're watching Nicolas Cage and Sean Connery try to stop Ed Harris. They're basically playing their cinematic selves.

Review[]

Doug (vo): And let's also be honest, that's exactly what we want, and Michael Bay is a good director to bring that to us. I feel like Michael Bay is kind of the flip side of Roland Emmerich. He'll usually get kind of these geeky people to star in his films, but in Roland Emmerich films, they're usually really annoying and I don't like watching them. But in Michael Bay films, you have about a 50/50 chance that they're going to be pretty entertaining. Maybe because they don't do the traditional thing where they give them geeky glasses and just make a bunch of dorky jokes, he chooses actors that do bring their own charm to it. I'll even admit, I don't mind Shia LaBeouf in the first Transformers movie. The sequels are a different story.

(Footage focusing on Stanley Goodspeed is shown)

Doug (vo): But Cage is believable as somebody who's on the edge, but has enough know-how about this stuff. He's just odd and awkward enough. I would buy this would be a guy who stays fit, but also has a real interest in this strange subject.

(Footage focusing on Captain John Mason is shown)

Doug (vo): Sean Connery basically has to be the older badass that he was playing a lot around that time, and, again, if you're good at something, why stop doing it? He brings that traditional charm, but also rough attitude that mixes pretty well with a character that's both supposed to be kind of a hero and kind of a villain. I don't think I'm spoiling anything by saying he doesn't want to go on the mission, but as time goes by, he does learn some respect for Cage's character. And what they end up doing with the two at the end feels right, it doesn't feel like you're cheated or manipulated in any way. It's a little gimmicky, but it's gimmicky in the right way, a way we want to see for a film like this.

(Footage focusing on the villain, General Francis Hummel, is shown)

Doug (vo): Ed Harris, I feel like could play this role in his sleep, but once again, it's because he's really good at playing it. He does a good job being a sympathetic villain without being too sympathetic or too evil. You don't want to see him succeed, but you know where he's coming from.

(Footage focusing on the special effects and the directing style is shown)

Doug (vo): And like I said, even Michael Bay wasn't quite in Transformers testicle territory yet. I think the only major hit he had before this was Bad Boys, and...I'll admit, it is fun seeing a lot of these cliches we would associate with this guy kind of starting out here. If you look at it now, you'd say this looks like a million other movies out there, and 900,000 of them were probably directed by Michael Bay. But at the time, this was kind of an innovative style. Roger Ebert talked about how most of his shots were pretty much just a trailer, like everything was shot for a trailer. And, yeah, he's correct, but I feel like there is a right way and a wrong way to do that, and in The Rock, it feels like, for the most part, it's done right. I feel like there's a good energy to it, a good pacing to it, I feel like Bay lost that shortly after this film. But it was intriguing seeing these kind of shots that were usually saved for bigger moments in the movie just kind of used all the time. I'm not sure if he found a lot of shortcuts to get these shots done or if he just had a very clear vision of what he wanted or maybe it was a bit of both, but it's a style that feels big, but not too big. It knows what it is, it's just a fun little action movie that still wants you to feel a little something, it wants you to stay invested...for the most part.

(Footage focusing on the action sequences is shown)

Doug (vo): Yeah, okay, so there are some Bay-isms here that sadly do not age that well, and, yeah, he definitely exploited much more down the line. Like, the big one being, even if something is not an action sequence, it's an action sequence. In the opening, there's a moment where one of these green spheres looks like it might have been punctured, and it looks like people are going to get infected, and it's supposed to be a suspenseful moment, but it's not shot like a suspenseful moment, it's shot like an action sequence, and it just suddenly goes from, like, zero to a thousand in, like, a millisecond. I remember when I was a teen watching that and saying, "That felt a little weird. I get the feeling that was supposed to be more of a quiet moment, like, with moody music instead of action-packed music". There's also a car chase in the middle of the movie, and, yes, you're expected to have a little bit of camera movement because it's an action sequence, you want to keep the momentum up. But there's literally scenes of people just talking in their cars and the camera is constantly zooming in, zooming out, moving left, moving right. It is so obnoxious. I guess you could say that's kind of the kitchy fun of watching a Bay film, but I don't know, it just gives me a headache. But when the real action sequences have to get going, they're usually done pretty well. I'm not going to say they're spectacular or anything, but I can make them out enough, and I do find myself rooting for the main characters...well, all except Michael Biehn, 'cause if he's in the movie, you know what's going to happen to him.

Final thought[]

Doug (vo): It's a good Michael Bay film before he got drunk on Michael Bay. And even then, I acknowledge there is a right and a wrong way to do even that. He often had a talent of giving young male audiences exactly what they were looking for at exactly the right time, whether you see that as a good thing or not. But in my opinion, this is one of the good times. It's light enough without being insulting, dramatic enough without being depressing, action-packed enough without it being tiring, and charming enough without being too manipulative. It's the perfect definition of an enjoyable waste of time.

(One of the film's final scenes, showing Stanley Goodspeed looking up and seeing John Mason walking away, is shown)