The Rock is a 1996 Academy Award-nominated action film that primarily takes place on Alcatraz Island, and the San Francisco Bay area. It was directed by Michael Bay and stars Sean Connery, Nicolas Cage, and Ed Harris. It was produced by Don Simpson/Jerry Bruckheimer Films and released through Disney's Hollywood Pictures. The film is dedicated to producer Don Simpson, who died five months before its release.

Plot

A group of rogue Marines from Force Recon, led by a disenchanted Brigadier General, Francis X. Hummel (Ed Harris), seize a stockpile of rockets armed with VX Nerve Agent, a modern chemical weapon of nightmarish virulence with the capability to withstand consumption by napalm, the standard countermeasure to chemical weapons. However, during Hummel's sieze of the VX gas, one of his own men is lost when a gas canister is dropped.

The Marines take over Alcatraz Island during a guided tour, taking 81 tourists hostage in the prison cells. Hummel calls the Pentagon and the Director of the FBI, informing them of his intentions: he will launch the lethal VX gas rockets over the population of the San Francisco Bay Area unless reparations of $1 million are paid to each of the families of Marines who died under his command in covert operations within 40 hours. His grievances have mainly to do with the government's refusal to pay due compensation to the families. As Hummel has been previously told, compensation would acknowledge that the Marine died on active duty, tacitly admitting to official government approval of their activities, even though they were illegal. He is nevertheless determined to carry out his mission.