THE ROCK

In the new action thriller The Rock, General Francis Xavier Hummel (Ed Harris) moves to the other side of the law in his quest for justice from the United States government. With a group of hostages in his possesion, he threatens to launch a battery of poisonous rockets on the San Francisco Bay area if his demands are not met. The city's only hope for survival is an FBI chemical/biological weapons expert, Stanley Goodspeed (Nicolas Cage), and John Patrick Mason, the only prisoner to have escaped from the island (Sean Connery). With the clock ticking, this unlikely duo embarks on a desperate mission to infiltrate Alcatraz and detoxify the weapons before disaster strikes.

Behind the Scenes...

A team of army commandos seize control of Alcatraz Island in The Rock. Nicolas Cage stars as an FBI chemical weapons expert. The action explodes on the streets of San Francisco in The Rock.

With help from the National Park Service and the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, the film crew descended on Alcatraz Island. Dozens of trailers and 40-foot trucks filled with equipment were loaded onto industrial barges, shipped across the San Francisco Bay and then lifted onto the island by an aquatic crane. Film, food, water and other supplies were shipped via barges, tugboats and water taxis on a daily basis. "Michael [Bay] has great vision. It's evident within a few scenes that it's his movie," says Nicolas Cage. "The way he shot the island has style. It looks larger than life. With the right lens, it looks pretty sinister and grim which makes it a very scary place to set an action movie." "The place has its ghosts," says Ed Harris. "It was great to shoot out there because Alcatraz has its own atmosphere and its own feeling of isolation. With the fog, wind and dampness, it gave a sense of reality." "This story is indigenous to Alcatraz," remarks Sean Connery. "The whole idea of the escape we perform, finding our way back where the FBI sets up headquarters, every main feature is tied to Alcatraz. That's why it's called The Rock." Despite the amazing setting however, producer Don Simpson explains that it is the characters of The Rock who really make the movie come alive: "Essentially, the film is about heroism, valor, honor, nobility and bravery, and the fact that one cannot regard these qualities in the strictest sense of black and white. There are many gray areas that each of the film's characters must face. It was our intention to set up a circumstance where each of the characters was not completely straightforward, most notably the villain."