The Rock 1996 is Michael Bay's James Bond movie
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Blender Dumbass👁 8
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The Rock by Michael Bay is about an FBI chemist agent ( Nicolas Cage ) who calls for help from an old retired British Intelligence Agent played by Sean Connery himself. No wander there are theories that this agent character could be James Bond, making this film a kind of unofficial Bayhem!ed sequel to Connery Bond films. It's not like he didn't play James Bond outside of the main franchise. He did play James Bond in Never Say Never Again which is a real James Bond film, which is not a part of the main franchise. So maybe, possibly, he did that again here too. We will never know.
Being the second film by Michael Bay, this movie is still a bit rough around the edges. It is not as undefined as Bad Boys. Watching this film you know for sure you are watching a Michael Bay film. There is no doubt about it. But for example the action sequences in the film are a bit rough.
If you compare the Yellow Ferrari chase from The Rock to even the Grey Ferrari chase in Bad Boys II ( 2003 ), you can see how much Bay has grown as an action film-maker. In Bad Boys ( the first one ) cars are practically not on screen, but that is due to the budget. In The Rock cars are on screen but it is very hard to tell what's going on. And most shots are done from either too far away, or something, that makes them look rather uninteresting. And then by Bad Boys II there is total Bayhem!.
Though even if his car chases aren't yet where they need to be, the cinematography in this film is sharp as fuck! You know how Michael Bay likes to shoot everything like it is the most epic thing ever. This is the first movie where you actually get his signature Bay style really shine. On Bad Boys ( the first one ) he did it only once in a while, only in certain cases. Here he finally does it everywhere.
I discussed in my review of Bad Boys how it seems like Michael Bay was mimicking the style of Quentin Tarantino to spice up the dialogue. This film has actual Quentin Tarantino dialogue in it. He was brought in by producer Jerry Bruckheimer who worked a lot with Tony Scott ( who's style of directing Bay was trying to mimic on Bad Boys ), who worked on a Tarantino script in True Romance. First Tarantino was brought up by Bruckheimer to spice up the dialogue in Crimson Tide ( another Tony Scott film ). And then finally to spice up the dialogue in The Rock. Which was the last time Tarantino ever agreed to spice up a dialogue in a movie, apparently.
Before Bay worked with James Cameron on capturing 3D images for Transformers 3 and even before Bay tried to compete with Cameron's Titanic by doing Pearl Harbor, he already took Cameron actors ( Ed Harris and Michael Biehn ) straight out of Cameron's The Abyss and right into The Rock for a great effect. Their only scene on screen together is so dramatic and so intense, it alone is worth the price of a cinema ticket, to watch.
Still this movie has one more cinema history quark to it. This is the first movie where Michael Bay started taking actors from the Coen brothers. He ended up using a lot of them ( especially Peter Stormare and John Turturro ), but this film in particular, beside Nicolas Cage, has also William Forsythe who co-starred with Cage on a Coen brothers movie called Raising Arizona.
Happy Hacking!!!
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