“The Rock” is fueled by big action scenes and thrilling set pieces. But it’s true bread-and-butter is found in burgeoning action star Nicolas Cage and the ground-shaking charisma of Sean Connery.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 18, 2024

The Rock still feels generic and lacking in any of the flourishes that distinguish hacks from legendary auteurs.

| Original Score: D+ | Feb 2, 2023

Much of the action feels thin and inauthentic.

| Original Score: C | Sep 1, 2022

Very entertaining action hokum that benefits hugely from the uses made of the three stars.

| Jun 14, 2022

The special effects are reason enough to check this one out.

| May 31, 2022

...if The Rock lacks any kind of realism...there's no shortage of crowd-pleasing antics to amuse all classes...

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 30, 2021

The most enjoyable, and the most rewatchable, action blockbuster of the 1990s. (25th anniversary)

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Jul 16, 2021

The Rock's secret sauce though, the thing that allows it to stand the test of time, is the casting.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 9, 2021

The Rock makes sense as Cage's true action debut because it basically forces the quirky Cage character to become an action hero.

| Jun 7, 2021

Connery and Harris are decent in just about anything, shaping their roles into something more memorable and quirky than basic heroes and villains.

| Original Score: 8/10 | Sep 24, 2020

The Rock is far from the worst movie that Bay's made, but given its roster of impressive performers and promising opening hour, it might just the ADD-afflicted filmmaker's most disappointing.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jul 16, 2014

Connery and Cage are a compelling team and redeem the film from ruin despite the mechanical plot, an excessive body count and a miraculous recovery (you'll know it when you see it).

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | May 27, 2014

There isn't a shot, scene or sequence in The Rock that doesn't move furiously, typically with colored lights flashing into our faces or onto those of the actors.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | May 27, 2014

The movie's best asset is the old-fashioned, buddy-movie interplay between Cage and Connery - Cage as the frantic, white-collar lab technician who doesn't like guns, Connery as the weathered, resourceful old pro.

| Original Score: 3/4 | May 27, 2014

You might need to take Dramamine before entering a Michael Bay movie. The one-time music-video director has an annoying habit of finding the tightest shots, editing the heck out of them and scoring the works to loud music.

| Original Score: 2/4 | May 27, 2014

For action-adventure fans, it just doesn't get any better than The Rock.

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 27, 2014

Since the plot is ridiculous, The Rock works best when it's most light-hearted.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | May 27, 2014

If it's not the most awful thing I've ever seen, it's close enough to make me wince.

| Original Score: 2/5 | May 27, 2014

Neither as cartoonish as Con Air, nor as sentimental as Armageddon, this most satisfying of blockbuster movies deserves further kudos for establishing Nicolas Cage as one of Hollywood's unlikeliest action heroes.

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 27, 2014

As relentlessly dumb and implausible as the Die Hard movies but even more entertaining, this loud and violent action film profits greatly from the galvanizing presence of Connery.

| May 27, 2014