Like every other male birthed in the Western Hemisphere, I've been bred to get a hard-on every time Jean-Claude Van Dam slays a human being with his bare feet. I guess watching a man bleed to death on film is kind of cool in a prehistoric dominance sort of way; actually, no, no it's not. Neither is James Bond outracing some Sith Lord Russian Nationalist commie fuck with a souped-up Aston Martin or Steven Seagal snapping a Chinamen's neck while perilously dangling from Jet Li's ball sack. It's mostly vapid and pointless and produced for retard wife beaters who think popping open a sixer of Pabst Blue Ribbon will drive the feelings of insecurity away. But I'm a realistic guy. Black and white is a bullshit concept. No genre of film is infinitely good, just as none is infinitely bad. Hitler turned around the German Economy. John Lennon was a terrible father. It's a game of give-and-take, baby. So, while I despise the majority of skull-crushing, duel-to-the-death tomfoolery, it's only fair I admit The Rock is not only watchable but legitimately awesome.
I used to think most people agreed on this. Hell, Roger Ebert wrote an editorial praising the film's being chosen for a Criterion DVD release, but apparently, there's an entire niche group of action genre haters who consider The Rock a sister wife to The Quest. You people know who you are, you Justin Long-liking, Mac-typing, eight dollar mocha-drinking cocksuckers. You're the same assholes who keep the farmer's market in business and put up signs proclaiming your love for baby seals. I hate you with a passion, not only for your Barack Star t-shirts but also for your terrible fucking opinions. The Rock is a good movie, goddamnit.
So, this one's for Joe Sixpack action fan out there. It's for the twelve year old kid who thinks that guy falling through the rusty pole is cool. It's for all the lonely dudes who've jerked off to Claire Forlani. It's for all the old school Sean Connery fans. And for that badass five man gun standoff between the mercenaries. And most of all, it's for every single legitimate film fan who looked past the menacing action-movie-moniker in order to appreciate a really great motion picture. Here's why I will watch The Rock once a month until the day L. Ron Hubbard calls me home, written in dubiously offensive, overly abrasive and outrageously argumentative language, as if I was personally standing in front of you and assaulting your ears with a verbal harrangue so frightening it would make Lewis Black quiver like a six year old girl who just saw her dog eaten alive by a snake.
The first thing you cocksuckers always rag on The Rock for is the script. The dialogue is simply atrocious. Erroneous! How many references to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn does your favorite movie have? None. You probably didn't even read One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich, did you? That's what I thought, thrift store shopper. The Rock even had some unaccredited rewrites from Quentin Tarantino and Aaron Sorkin. And that discussion about The Beatles sounding better on vinyl. Oh yeah, and on top of all that penned brilliance, it delivers the greatest abbreviated action film back-and-forth in recent memory:
Losers always whine about their best, winners go home and fuck the prom queen.
Carla was the prom queen.
And then there's the acting accusation, always made in a bad Sean Connery voice and souped up to say something like, "Welcome To The Rock." Yeah, his Scottish tambour is thick as a Louisiana swamp, but auditory outrageousness or no auditory outrageousness, his acting performance is stellar here and somehow, at like sixty-five, he makes the action stunts look believable. Plus, Ed Harris is brilliant as Francis X Hummel ("Stand down captain!") and Nicholas Cage was fresh off his Academy-Award win in the heavily underseen Leaving Las Vegas. Throw in Claire Forlani, David Morse, and the commissioner of the More Taste League, and you've practically got the entire fucking Royal Shakespeare Company. So, don't go waving your lip ring about Keanu Reeves-level nonsense at me.
It's usually at about this point in the discussion when you bring up either a) Michael Bay directorial credits or b) Nic Cage stabbing himself in the heart. Let me address the aorta shot first. Yes, it's a little graphic and ridiculous but no more so than the overdose scene in Pulp Fiction. How would you counteract the onsetting effects of a VX Nerve Agent you just inhaled in order to slay a terrorist threatening to destroy the population of greater San Francisco? Aleve can't cure it all. And, yes, Michael Bay did direct The Rock. He's made a Longaberger basket's worth of shitty effects-driven action films, but even Nixon got it right with Ping Pong Diplomacy. Transformers might skimp a little bit on the plot, but The Rock has a fully-fleshed out narrative arc. That's just a goddamn fact.
So, for all the Co-op eating hoity-toitys. And for all the scone consuming motherfuckers. And all the Twilight-reading douche bags. Shut your goddamn mouths about The Rock being a stereotypical, ho-hum action flick. It's every bit as good as your precious Babel.
