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.
IMO, the F355 was miscast. A DB7 or Vantage would have been much better to mirror the irony of a Brit escaping the US Feds in American Iron while being chased down by a thoroughbred of his own countrymen.
in my opinion the pane of glass a foot off the floor inside the garage was fortunate to have ramps to get that Ferrari through the window at all. It might have been kind of cool foreshadowing if the car he managed to nab was Green 60’s fastback mustang though. it would have been foreshadowing along with paying an homage to another solid San Fran car chase. the real crime with the Ferrari is that awful color.
Have to disagree on the color, though. Fly yellow is fly.
Well there are internet theories that “John Mason” is really James Bond and this is Connery playing Bond one last time. So an Aston would have been fitting.
https://screenrant.com/the-rock-john-mason-james-bond-same-person-theory/
My biggest gripe with the chase scene is the cable car that inexplicably explodes following derailment.
Because….Michael Bay of course
For some reason, my grandma (who was 81 at the time), really liked this movie. I saw it in the theater with her. When I would stay at her house for a weekend, she asked me to bring my VCR and a copy of The Rock.
She was an interesting lady.
What a bizarre chase scene.
Because literally nobody in SF ever owned a Hummer.
And maybe two have ever owned a Ferrari.
For me, the best SF driving scene was in “Foul Play”
Kojak – Bang-Bang!
Far out
(At least that’s what I think they say. Never understood it 100%)
Far Out!
https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/e7ffb52d-c4fb-4234-bb25-783a75ed3fc8
Sayonara – Kojak – Bang-Bang!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koMa8BBNSfw
I love that movie. The only thing that bugs me about it, and it’s minor, is when Chevy Chase tries to get Gloria to finish her milk.
“Drink up!”
Takes one sip
“Full? Good girl.”
Maybe the directors thought watching someone drinking milk for a full minute wasn’t entertainment.
I just watched Escape from Alcatraz, which also holds up pretty well for a late 70s flick.
But for my money, there’s not a single Alactraz setting that top Phil Hartman in So I Married an Axe Murderer.
RIP Vicky.
She stole my heart and my cat
I’ve never been able to think about the ocular cavity without channeling Vicky.
“I thought you were going to kil…eave me.”
I’ll proudly admit the last superhero movie I actually sat through was when Batman was still played by George Clooney. I think. I lost track. All the others, I’ve quit after 15 minutes or so.
OTOH, if you asked me about my favorite action movies of all time, The Rock is way up there on the list. There’s something nice about Michael Bay before he was a household name. In contrast, I consider Independence Day one of the worst movies of all time.
90s action was really great, and this is not nostalgia talking — I try to go back and rewatch things to see how they hold up. Most recent example was Die Hard (obvs…Christmas break!). If you ignore the fact that it’s yet another movie that would be over in 10 minutes if everyone had cell phones, it’s still an amazing flick.
I still sometimes say, “I drive a Volvo. A beige one” when I’m trying to explain how boring I am.
Other times I say, “I drive a Dodge Stratus!”
My Parents had a beige Volvo.
Because there were no blue ones on the boat.
This film is the first in Cage’s Beige Volvo Trilogy, and the more times I watch The Rock, Face/Off, and Con Air, the more boring I get.
My ex-wife had a 1984 escort wagon. It was our only car for a while in the very early 1990’s. I will never tire of watching escorts being destroyed.
Throughout the movie, Connery dies a great job deshpite knowing he’sh not making an Oshcar winner. He knowsh it ish shtupid fun. You jusht have to shushpend dishbelief.
Hummer flattening a hippie beetle in the 90s, pretty much a metaphor for San Francisco and the rise of tech.
There was a Hummer ad (probably H2) where two guys are riding down the road in their Hummer, and the camera is pretty tight on the drivers side window, and no one is talking. All of the sudden the hummer drives over something and you hear the “bomp-bomp” and you see the hummer sort of bounce a little, and as they continue down the road, the driver turns to the passenger and asks, ” ‘Possum”?
The passenger, looking back to see what they drove over says, “No, Rabbit……. convertible”.
That Escort was almost certainly already totaled. Cars like that, used as collision fodder in movie chase scenes have already been stripped of all weight: engines, interior, etc are all gone. They’re painted to look not like a beater, and quick cuts are used to prevent the audience from noticing things like spray painted fog lights, dents, butchered front grille plastic, mismatched tires, etc. Plus the lightened weight allows the active car to toss them around like balsa and making the scene more dramatic… don’t grieve over this crappy Escort, I’m saying… it was a shell with propane or some such in it.
So, it’s:
“Don’t cry for me, Matthew Hardigree. The truth is, I was already totaled.”
But…Football in the Groin has a football in the groin.
It’s a 2nd gen Escort Sport (derisive snort), and one that’s clearly seen some prior action based on the shape of the front bumper. Everyone at my high school drove either one of those or a G body.
They were a dime a dozen, even back then – nothing of value was lost.
For just a moment my eyes saw G wagon instead of G body. That would have been one heck of a social structure to endure in high school.
I just watched “True Lies” and I was reminded of how great the 1990s were for big, dumb, loud, fun action movies. Just do not even pretend that anything is believable, and make some popcorn. Good times.
True Lies is so fun and one of my favorite Bill Paxton roles. When he pees his pants and goes on that rant about how he’s pathetic (“I’m navel lint!”) … delightful.
Bill Paxton never got the credit he deserves.Somehow silly enough to be Chet in Weird Science, but serious enough to pull of something amazing like Frailty, that guy ruled
And he was the comic relief in Aliens: “Who don’t you put her in charge…?”
Love Bill Paxton.
It’s truly one of the best action movies. From “What kind of a sick b**** steals the ice cube tray from the freezer?” to “Give me the god damn page!” to the entire dam scene. It’s so great.
I first saw True Lies when it came out in the summer of ’94 as the 1st half of a drive in double feature with The Crow. My GF and I were lounged in the open hatch of my 82 Datsun 200SX. That was a great summer.
When this movie came out a friend of mine was in the Army responsible for keeping the Humvees running and called bullshit on a H1 crashing into that many cars without falling apart and breaking down halfway through the chase scene.
Maybe the whole Escort thing was a subtle joke referencing all the murdered prostitutes in serial killer movies, and for that matter actual serial killers.
:::edit:::
Subtle… Michael Bay? Nah.
https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/50527845e4b022cef5f0c1e6/1632779095548-J31GZZXUN98ER0FILA2P/IMG_4060.gif?format=2500w
It’s funnier if I could just embed the GIF.
Worst chase scene ever.
1. Chasing a H1 with a Ferrari is like a dog chasing a car. What is he go to do if he catches it.
2. I’ve been to San Francisco and this is not it. You can’t go 4 foot without a steep hill. A Ferrari would not be able to get anywhere.
4. Unless that old car the FBI is driving us the one from MIB it isn’t catching that air or any car
5. The FBI agent would be announcing the roads and directions not he is hitting everything to block us
6. No one catches Bond no one
Yeah I feel like Bond would have only been in Alcatraz if he somehow needed to be there for a mission and that could have been hinted at with a few words of dialogue.
There’s plenty of flatter parts in SF.
Regarding Item 2: Part of the chase was filmed in San Francisco while part was filmed in Los Angeles. When the crash with the yellow Escort occurs, followed by the 355 driving through the window, that’s Los Angeles; 7th and Centre in San Pedro to be specific. The 7th Street Garage in the film is now Port Town Brewery.
Only one? For me, the unforgivable moments in the Rock were:
The casting was good. Connery as an ex-British spy was clever and Harris can read a phonebook and make it compelling.
On the boiler, Alcatraz is still operated as a museum and tourist attraction, you still need hot water for the bathrooms and to heat the buildings that aren’t ruined
But, they definitely don’t need to run the enormous old boilers just for that minimal load
I’ve visited Alcatraz three or four times. I doubt the buildings are heated. They sure seemed cold during my visits. As you mentioned, what little hot water that’s needed could be provided by local 2-gallon electric water heaters. The functioning boiler they had to swim under ruined my suspension of disbelief. In my humble opinion, Bay could have made the scene more perilous, believable and intense if the boiler had partially collapsed leaving shards of metal to navigate underwater with no guaranteed exit.
I’m arguing about scene believability in a Michael Bay movie. (shakes head)
I guarantee any building that still has intact plaster – so, maybe like staff break area and offices, if nothing else – is being heated, ones held in a state of arrested decay might have at least a small amount of heating to stabilize as-is and stop further deterioration, but maybe not.
That’s what you’re worried about? John Patrick Mason (Connery) claims he had to memorize the timing of the quarter gear / flame burst thingies in order to exfiltrate the contained prison area, which comes in handy because he has to reverse the process to get back in.
Once through, he opens a door – a rusty old door that opens from the contained area of the prison to the cistern room – to let the SEALs in.
WHELCOME TO THE RHOCK!
*Shpy
Come on, this movie is great and the chase scene is fun. It is a 90’s Michael Bay movie, what do you want? Classic old school chase with 100 expendable cop cars that smash into each other, flip over, blow up. Mason causing millions of dollars of damage single-handedly. Stanley driving through a plate glass window, shooting the airbag after it deploys (good luck hearing after that). The F355’s 40 valve V8 was a legendary motor.
Street Punk: “Hey man, you just fucked up your Ferrari”
Stanley Goodspeed: “It isn’t mine”
My favorite exchange in the entire movie. It isn’t mine.
I respect your love of the escorts. Hopefully they gave you a discount.
Back when I owned an Escort I had to pay my mechanic by cheque, and in the memo I always put “Escort service.”
He was a friend of the family it was fine.
Nice!
The whole chase is questionable, valid concerns about Escorts unfairly getting it aside. It plays out like the exact opposite of Bullitt. In Bullitt, Hickman was trying to get away and McQueen was trying to catch him; in the Rock, both Connery and Cage seemed to both focus on hitting everything possible, with the real heroic driving dedicated seemingly only to lining up to be able to collide with more things. It hardly telegraphed their characters as having top driving skills.
Bay’s love for destruction porn is a faint shadow of the realism for which Peter Yates strove for sure.
I wonder how beloved chase scenes would be if a heady dose of realism were injected and instead of only hitting other cars or conveniently placed water barrels, the chaser and chasee also blasted through several pedestrians bouncing heads off of street signs, flinging arms and legs helter skelter, and blasting geysers of arterial blood skyward. Maybe dragging a body or two for few blocks. Would people still cheer? I mean, I probably would, but Im not a people person.
The original Gone in 60 Seconds had at least one shot with an ambulance at a crash scene tending to some innocent people caught in the carnage. No gore IIRC, but it’s the only car chase movie I can think of where bystanders aren’t simply near-missed or their misfortune is superficial and played for comedy (like, a car gets ripped in half and the people spill out stunned, but fine, and the wife hits the husband or something stupid to that effect).
I didn’t recall that scene, but then I usually don’t pay close attention while attempting to watch Nick Cage movies. When you can be identified as the single worst thing in a clinker like “Valley Girl,” that’s saying something. And don’t get me started on “Ghost Rider.”
Not that terrible Cage remake, I mean the 1973 or so original made by a stunt driver where the car is a normal Mustang, just another car on a list of cars he’s being paid to steal that he happens to be caught in the act of taking instead of the uglified custom Shelby with a weird sentimental backstory, and the protagonist is just a car thief scumbag, not a car thief scumbag presented as a hero we’re supposed to identify with due to a nonsense plot involving a kidnapped brother (or whatever it was). Acting and pacing aren’t great and you’re pretty much just expected to watch it for the chase, so it’s not much of a movie to rewatch, IMO, but neither is the remake and the original has a more realistic plot, cooler stolen cars (though passed by too quickly in the holding garage), and the end is kind of funny.
The star and director of the original was killed in an accident while filming “Gone in 60 Seconds 2” around 1989. His wife co-produced the Cage remake with Jerry Bruckheimer.
Or John Frankenheimer, for that matter.
Exactly. Or thinking about it, William Friedkin. Popeye Doyle has to balance his focus between getting the assassin AND upholding his duty to safeguard the city’s citizens and property, and the tension inherent in those competing objectives is what gives that chase such nail-biting energy.
French Connection’s car case is probably my favorite. While the 1971 LeMans was a decent performer, the one in the film is a pretty basic brown four door. Much more believable for him to happen across that than some flashier car like you might expect from other movies.
The older I get, the more I’ve grown to appreciate the subtleties like that in that movie. The intense concentration and emotion shown in Hackman’s face telegraphs the seriousness and unusualness of the chase so well, which heightens the realism, say compared with McQueen’s racecar driver calm in Bullitt.
It highlights the difference between their acting styles. McQueen was the cool action star, and Hackman was acting how a normal person would.
I can’t find the exact quote, but when Dustin Hoffman and Hackman were both new to acting, Gene told Dustin he was disheartened when someone called him and his acting “too ordinary”. Dustin told him: “You’re not ordinary, you’re real.” and that seems to be something Hackman took to heart the rest of his career.
Ronin? That chase was my favorite.
I’ve yet to see that one but have heard good things.
I don’t remember the specifics of the Paris chase, but in the commentary on the DVD i checked out of the library way back when, there was specific mention of showing bystander carnage from stray bullets in the gun fights. as the director’s choice. Showing the everyday damage glossed over by most glorifications of conflict.
Well that justifies a rewatch party.
I’m trying to remember because it’s been obviously quite a few years now, but I think The Rock was about the time that action movies fell out of favor for me. They’d become caricatures of themselves and full of cliche scenes that I already knew were coming before the film got there. I don’t really mind having to suspend my disbelief for the purpose of a film but at least be somewhat smart or clever about it so I’m not as aware of it. Seemed like the genre got kind of stupid around this time.
You really should revisit your abstention. You missed out on a lot of good ones after that then-particularly Cage vehicles of the 90s. There’s so much realism. Face/Off and ConAir are such great, tight, solid movies with no plot holes or anything. Just cinematic perfection.
Absolutely. Also, neither Connery nor Cage are action heroes. They’re both wonderful at what they are, sure, but they were among the first of the green-screened leads. It feels forced b/c it’s all fake in a way the golden age action movies weren’t (as wonderfully fake as they were otherwise).
As Stallone has said, back in the day, he and Arnold and the rest actually had to do the stunts, run around with tons of weapons strapped to them, etc. IT has made it all much easier to do now.
I prefer the Clint Eastwood The Rock. Or a biography of the rock . What elite agent or agents would set up on an island where just shoot a missile at them.
How about the nerve gas being glowing neon green orbs in a glass necklace thing? So stupid
A really elegant string-of-pearls configuration. Unfortunately, incredibly unstable.
Not to mention that most military nerve agents are binary compounds of two non toxic chemicals that when combined become lethal and thevcombining process occurs in the delivery system ie. missile warhead, umbrella tip, dual chambered breakable container, etc. to safeguard the people employing the weapon. Not very photogenic, though. But then, most lasers are invisible, too, except in Hollywood.
And most computers don’t make blooping and beeping noises every time you click on something
It’s not a necklace….
When Peter Pan asked if you do believe in fairies, you said “no” didn’t you?
Haha no, and I can actually enjoy any James Bond movie, even Moonraker, and one of my favorite action movies is Speed, despite it having a fatal flaw in its premise that would basically prevent the bulk of the movie from even happening.
Same. I thought this was a terrible era for action because so many of them weren’t quite cartoon-dumb enough, like Commando or something, yet they were too stupid for me to connect with as a more realistic story with characters I think I was supposed to give a shit about. I get that they weren’t trying for realistic, but I just didn’t like the particular era’s balance of ridiculous action with the appearance of intent to have at least somewhat believable characters.
maybe the Beetle was a homage to Bullitt
Tracers and Escorts were huge rental car fleet queens back then, San Francisco gets enormous amounts of out of town visitors and therefore also has a huge airport, that’s what I’m going with
I think the biggest flaw is that an H1 is in a chase scene with… anything.
I bet the Cushman accelerated faster.
Today’s HUMVEE EV would rewrite that script.
haha yeah probably more than a little bit.
There is nothing good about this chase scene. My friends and I were laughing at it in the theater because it was that bad, and that was before the streetcar exploded. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8I-dOh_ih8c
Counterpoint:
That’s good speed!