Rock, The MPAA Rating: R Entertainment: +3 Content: -3 1/2

DRAGONHEART may feature Sean Connery's voice, but THE ROCK gets the whole Connery package. A disgruntled Marine general (Ed Harris) recruits a team of like-minded soldiers, commandeers some deadly nerve gas missiles and takes over Alcatraz prison, with numerous tourists held hostage. He threatens to explode those missiles over San Francisco unless U.S. officials agree to recognize American soldiers killed during covert operations and compensate their families. A Navy SEAL team is assembled to take down these terrorists, joined by chemical weapons specialist Stanley Goodspeed (Nicolas Cage). But the key to the rescue is the only man with the knowledge to infiltrate the prison, John Patrick Mason (Connery), a top-secret federal prisoner once held at Alcatraz who managed to escape. THE ROCK eventually turns into a buddy movie for Connery and Cage when the rest of their team is ambushed and slaughtered. With a heavy emphasis on action, however, this partnership is never explored to great effect and a few passing attempts at humor are overwhelmed. THE ROCK is long on action and short on plot, but all of its excitement and action will probably make it one of the summer's big box office hits.

All the problems in this film are solved with firepower rather than wits. Consequently THE ROCK is extremely violent. There are several shootouts in close quarters with plenty of bloody carnage. Other men are killed in equally gruesome fashion. Two are exposed to deadly gas which dissolves their skin, one's neck is broken, while another suffers a knife through the throat. Other grisly scenes include a victim impaled on a post after being pushed out a window by a fired rocket, one strangled with a chain and another shot in the foot and crushed. Even less imagination was used in the dialogue, with about 90 obscenities and regular profanities plus much mild and moderate crude language peppering every scene. To top it off, there's a totally gratuitous instance of a couple having sex. Connery's character may have been incarcerated, but THE ROCKs violence and foul language run wild.

Preview Reviewer: Mark Perry
Distributor: Buena Vista Distribution, 3900 W. Alameda Ave., Burbank, CA 91521