Look, I enjoy a Michael Bay movie every now and then and I refuse to apologize for it. He makes great action films and the best, maybe, is The Rock. There are fewer car chases than most Bay-directed projects, but the one that’s there works quite well and has a high density of hijinks for such a short chase.
If you don’t know the plot of The Rock you should go straight to Hulu and watch it now. I’ll wait.
Assuming you didn’t go and actually watch The Rock and need an explanation, then the short version of it is that a group of Marines, upset at the treatment of dead comrades, steal some missiles loaded with VX gas and set them up at Alcatraz. If money isn’t given to the widows then Ed Harris and his small band of troops are going to kill everyone in San Francisco.
In order to get into Alcatraz, the FBI needs the only person to ever escape the island prison: a former British SAS officer who was put there after stealing documents from J. Edgar Hoover. That’s a bit of a stretch, but that’s not my issue with the movie, and somehow Sean Connery as the ex-spy makes you believe it. Nor is the use of a flamboyant hair stylist, played quite well by Anthony Clarke, a big issue for me or Nicholas Cage.
“To be honest with you, the stuff with the homosexual hairdresser at first I thought… it’s not gonna work, it’s not going to be funny. And then I saw it in the movie theater and I didn’t get upset about it… it’s fine,” said Cage in the Criterion Collection’s excellent film commentary.
My issue is with the chase, though not with the chase itself.
“This was kind of a weird structure of the movie because the movie is happening in a lot of places and…. there’s a lot of inner-cutting going on and, I kept feeling ‘God, there’s so much setup time to the movie, we have to get some sort of release,'” explained Bay in the commentary.
Bay admitted the chase was added to the movie after screening it and realizing there was a hole that slowed everything down.
“Sometimes movies play like music, you need choruses once in a while, you need bridges and stuff,” said Bay. “I had a fight about the car chase with one of the writers because I thought this was one way to help, after all the complicated setup, to suck the audience back into it.”
The writer protested about making a movie for a demographic and Bay did acknowledge it’s weird, but Bay also added that “[I]f you’re given $60 million you better know who you’re fucking selling the movie to because it might be the last time they ever give you $60 million again.”
All of this is true and it’s an enjoyable chase to watch, so it’s curious that Bay feels the need to defend it so much.
“A Ferrari is doing battle with a Humvee, you gotta watch that,” is Cage’s more succinct explanation, and the best. At one point Connery escapes from the FBI in a stolen Hummer and, to chase him, chemical weapons expert Cage nabs a Ferrari F355 from the valet.
Here’s the chase, via YouTube:
A lot of the in-car shots, according to Bay, are just grips waving lights and shaking the car while Bay makes engine noises and films the actors up close. It’s extremely effective and, per Bay, a cheaper way to get the shots he wants.
So, in the chase, we’ve got a black H1 being pursued by a yellow Ferrari F355 and a bunch of cops in various government fleet vehicles. In order to stymie his tail, Connery knocks the H1 into various vehicles, including a street car and a truck full of water jugs. [Editor’s Note: Notably for me, one is an old (I think 1964-1966) Beetle, complete with a license plate that reads LOVE BUG1 and an elaborate hand-done art-car paintjob. The Hummer sort of drives through that poor Beetle, really. – JT]
That’s all well and good, but Sean Connery pushes a Cushman three-wheeler into a clearly spraypainted (look at the foglights and also that’s not a GT color) but otherwise seemingly complete Ford Escort GT.
Is that really necessary? Back in 1995, that was at worst a four-year-old car. As you know, I’m a big fan of these cars and seeing one destroyed thusly is a bit of a disappointment. For some reason, all the damage done to the Ferrari by driving it through a window doesn’t bother me. It’s a movie! That’s part of the process.
There’s actually almost another moment of Escort peril though, thankfully, the Hummer and the Ferrari split the wagon and it survives.
As does a nearby Mercury Tracer. Wait, why are there so many cars on this one platform in one movie?
Let me back up, because I remember at least one more.
Yup, there’s another Tracer (maybe the same one) in an earlier shot: Honestly, given the apparent ubiquity of Escorts and Tracers in the San Francisco area maybe destroying just one didn’t seem like a big deal. Ok, Micheal Bay, you win this round.
Scarlett Johansson wanted to show boobs in The Island and Michael Bay talked her out of it
That’s the worst thing Michael Bay has ever done, period
That chase scene was terrible. The in car shots are visibly fake like you said (shakeycam) and when the Hummer hits the Cushman and Escort it clearly skids sideways and gets stuck against them while something blows up. Then a split second later it’s speeding past them. Cheap tricks and lame lines made this movie corny and dumb even back then.
I think the part about the Escort actually exploding is the missed opportunity here.
I know Michael is explosion happy, but had he put say a 1973 pinto there instead that at least would have made the explosion somewhat more believable.
The chase scene smacks strongly of the pane of glass trope in movies in general.
Top Secret beat him to the punch(line). 🙂