Rating: B-
Dir: Michael Bay
Star: Sean Connery, Nicolas Cage, Ed Harris, John Spencer
[22] As a Brit, there’s something very satisfying about watching Sean Connery, pensionable and locked up for 30 years, kicking the arses of the best American special forces. Indeed, this is on the whole fairly gratifying, particularly a first half which has two sequences that lesser films would happily claim as a finale. As is standard in this kind of thing, the professionals are toast early on, and it’s up to amateurs Connery and Nicolas Cage to save the day, in this case by evicting evil terrorists from Alcatraz. One at a time. In interesting ways. Usually involving explosions or gunfire, for this is a Jerry Bruckheimer movie. The major problem here may be biochemical: the human body can’t contain enough adrenalin for 135 minutes of uninterrupted climax, and by the end, I found myself punch-drunk and wobbling. Though that might just have been too much microwave popcorn.