Spoiler Warning: This discussion has very few spoilers: some set up from the first act, a general idea of the narrative at hand.
"Winners go home and fuck the prom queen."
I thought I’d end my day with one of the best action films of all time; debut Bayhem. The Rock. Incredible stuff, just insane and the result of increasing intensity in action films.
Bay is inexperienced here and hasn’t inflated to the self-indulgent, narcissistic levels of the Transformers saga quite yet. However, his credo of making every shot look epic is still here. The trademarks are all here, explosions for sure but more importantly the hero shot, telephoto lenses and non-stop motion. He literally shoots conversations like an action scene, makes everything feel like it has more weight to it, and because Bay is a maestro, it actually never looks boring. There’s also his habit of adding in events to long action sequences; case and point is the wheelchair basketball game that can be found halfway through a car chase. Bizarre, but works within the confines of this particular film.
The screenplay is absolutely bonkers, basically throwing out an excuse to include Alcatraz, rockets, an imprisoned Connery and a chemical-expert Cage. It is as crazy as it sounds. Cage is maybe at his eccentric best, throwing out dialogue in ways nobody else could with random peaks in volume. This is arguably the last great Connery film, and he similarly delivers some wonderful dialogue as only he could. The allusions to him as Bond are thick and fast; it’s quite literally like he’s playing an aged 007. The Harris character is interesting and a strange one for a film like this, making him an out-and-out villain with an understandable viewpoint is beyond expectation.
The Rock is the beginning of a monster. This, alongside some of Bay’s other 90s ventures, are some of the most influential films of the entire action genre, for better or worse. It’s clear though, nobody does Bay better than the man himself, and I love it. Iconic performances, imagery that lasts in the mind and heaps of entertainment, which is exactly what I came for. They don’t make them like this any more.
Connor Clarke Film 