Featuring a high-powered all-star cast, The Rock offers slick, escapist action so riveting that despite large lapses of believability, is still more cohesive and developed than many other '90s genre entries. It also leaves audience members thoughtful concerning those gray areas between right and wrong. Most of the story takes place on Alcatraz Island where a much-decorated and heretofore highly respected war hero Gen. Francis X Hummel (Ed Harris) and a few followers have commandeered the empty prison and taken 80 tourists hostage. He demands that the U.S. government pay tribute and $100 million to the families of the soldiers who died during covert operations on missions the government refuses to acknowledge. If his requests are not met within 40 hours, he will unleash a series of missiles containing enough deadly gas to wipe out San Francisco's population. The Feds know he is deadly serious and so immediately effect a news black-out while frantically setting up an elite team to stop him. The first choice is the bookish FBI chemical warfare expert Stanley Goodspeed (Nicolas Cage), who though inexperienced in combat or fieldwork, has the knowledge to disarm the missiles. Next, the military retrieves misanthropic former British superspy John Patrick Mason (Sean Connery) from the prison where he was sent without a trial 30 years before after he was caught with J. Edgar Hoover's most secret files. They want the officially non-existent Mason because he is the only man to have successfully bust out of Alcatraz. The disparate Goodspeed and Mason are to lead a crack unit of Navy seals onto the Rock, save the tourists and prevent Hummel from annihilating the city. If they should fail, the Air Force will bomb the entire island and kill everyone upon it with highly flammable Thermite Plasma. At first Mason is understandably reluctant to help his captors, but then he learns his daughter, whom he has never seen before, is living in San Francisco. The unit makes it to the island, but unfortunately, the Seals get ambushed, and only Goodspeed and Mason are left to navigate the dark, serpentine tunnels beneath the prison. Action highlights include one of the most hair-raising car chases (rivaling even the granddaddy of Frisco pursuits from Bullitt) on film.