The Rock is a 1996 action film that primarily takes place on Alcatraz Island, and the San Francisco Bay area. It was directed by Michael Bay, director of Bad Boys, and stars Sean Connery, Nicolas Cage, and Ed Harris. It was produced by Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer, producers of Top Gun and Crimson Tide, and released through Disney's Hollywood Pictures. The film is dedicated to Simpson, who died five months before its release.

Plot

A group of rogue Force Recon Marines led by disenchanted Brigadier General Francis X. Hummel (Ed Harris), seize a stockpile of rockets armed with VX nerve agent, a modern chemical weapon with nightmarish lethality. They then seize Alcatraz Island during a guided tour and take 81 tourists hostage in the prison cells. Hummel threatens the Pentagon with launching VX gas rockets against the population of the San Francisco Bay Area unless the government pays reparations, including compensation to the families of Marines who died on illegal, clandestine missions.

The Pentagon and Federal Bureau of Investigation decide to deploy a Navy SEAL team, led by CDR Anderson (Michael Biehn), to retake the island and free Hummel's hostages by stealth. In need of first-hand knowledge of the underground tunnels of Alcatraz, they are forced to release the imprisoned John Patrick Mason (Sean Connery): the only inmate of Alcatraz who ever successfully escaped (which was covered up). FBI chemical weapons expert Dr. Stanley Goodspeed (Nicolas Cage)—socially nerdy and bumbling—is also recruited to neutralize the VX gas threat. The two men and the SEAL team commence their raid on Alcatraz. Meanwhile, the Pentagon prepares a secondary countermeasure to Hummel's VX gas rockets: readying prototype "thermite plasma" bombs capable of incinerating the poison gas, but which will also kill any person left on the island.