The Rock
Short description
A decorated Marine general, Francis X. Hummel, leads a group of renegade soldiers in seizing the former prison island of Alcatraz, taking the tourists there as hostages. He threatens to fire rockets loaded with a deadly chemical agent at San Francisco unless the government pays a large sum meant for the families of soldiers killed in secret operations. The FBI turns to its chemical weapons expert, Stanley Goodspeed, and to John Patrick Mason, a former British agent and the only man ever to escape from Alcatraz, whose knowledge of the island's passages is the key to getting inside.
Michael Bay directed the film, the second of the fifteen features he has made, following Bad Boys and preceding Armageddon. The screenplay is by Jonathan Hensleigh, David Weisberg and Douglas S. Cook, and Jerry Bruckheimer and Don Simpson produced. Sean Connery plays Mason, Nicolas Cage plays Goodspeed, and Ed Harris plays Hummel, with John Spencer, David Morse and William Forsythe among the credited cast of seventy-three.
Released in June 1996, the film cost about 75 million dollars and took roughly 335 million dollars worldwide, a strong return on its budget. On IMDb it holds a rating of 7.4 from around 379,000 votes, and on TMDB a 7.2 from over 5,000 votes. A critics' rating of 6.9 from seventy-four reviews places it close to the audience scores, indicating a broadly similar reception across both.
What's left behind the scenes
- According to director Michael Bay, the script was more serious and darker than the finished film. Most of the humorous moments and lines were improvised during filming.
- Sean Connery's character, John Mason, requests to be accommodated in a hotel that, coincidentally, is located on Mason Street.
- In one scene, Sean Connery says to Nicolas Cage: "Maybe I'm losing my sex appeal?" This is a nod to Connery's enduring appeal as a sex symbol, despite his age.
- In this film, Michael Biehn played a Marine officer for the third time in his film career, following his roles in “The Abyss” (1989) and “Navy SEALs” (1990).
- VX gas is 300 times more toxic than phosgene (COCl2), which was used during World War I. It was created in the Experimental Chemical Defence Laboratories, Porton Down, UK, in 1952. Patent applications were filed in 1962 and published only in February 1974. They stated that the substance was ethyl S-2-diisopropylaminoethyl methylphosphonothiolate. The lethal dose is 10 mg·min/m3 in air or 0.3 mg internally.
- Few people know that Quentin Tarantino was one of the co-writers of the screenplay for this film. However, Quentin insisted that his name not appear in the credits.
- Incidentally, the poison VX, which causes a person to die in agonizing pain within seven seconds, actually exists. It appeared in the 1950s as a result of an error: they were trying to create a pesticide but ended up with this. VX is held in large quantities by both the American and Russian militaries.
- The film's operator, John Schwartzman, is a cousin of Nicolas Cage, who played one of the leading roles. Schwartzman's mother, actress Talia Shire, is Cage's aunt.
- In the chase scene, when Mason drives a Hummer through the city and crashes into a water truck, cracks from the impact are clearly visible on the windshield. In the following shots, the cracks on the car's windshield are gone.
- The film’s cinematographer, John Schwartzman, is a cousin of Nicolas Cage, who played one of the main roles.
- In the scene where Mason opens the prison cells with a rope braided from mattress scraps, he initially opens the wrong door. However, in the next shot, when he finally manages to hook the rope onto his own lever and open his door, the lever of the cell he mistakenly opened first is found to be raised again.
- Filming took place in California from October 19, 1995, to January 19, 1996.
- The furnace in "Alcatraz" is labeled as being made at the "Bay Foundry," named after the film's director, Michael Bay.
- Some of the 'Navy SEALs' team members were played by actual special forces operatives.
- Stanley Anderson, who played the US President, also portrayed the head of state in the film "Armageddon" (1998), also directed by Michael Bay and produced by Jerry Bruckheimer.
- The film is dedicated to producer Don Simpson, who passed away during filming.
- The Finnish band Children of Bodom borrowed a melody from the film's soundtrack. It can be heard in the song "Bodom After Midnight" on the album "Follow The Reaper" (2000).
- Arnold Schwarzenegger was offered one of the leading roles, but he turned it down because at the time the script was only eighty pages long with a lot of notes, and it looked unfinished. Arnold later stated that he regretted this.
- Sean Connery asked for a small house to be built on Alcatraz. Considering the actor's advanced age and authority, as well as the reluctance to spend a significant amount of time each shooting day getting to the island, the producers accommodated his request.
- The photograph of General Hamell (Ed Harris) taken in Vietnam was taken from the film “Borderline” (1980), in which Harris starred with Charles Bronson.
- While Sean Connery's character gets a haircut in the hotel, the song "Flying on a Jet Plane" plays. The same song is sung by the astronauts in the film "Armageddon" (1998).
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
