Michael Bay's 'The Rock', Ranked Among 'Best Action Movies of All Time', Sparked a Global Controversy
The Rock appeared at No. 47 on Rolling Stone's famous list of the 50 Best Action Movies of All Time, and it's one of the few action films from this period that's aged surprisingly well.
Written by David Weisberg, Douglas S. Cook, and Mark Rosner, and directed by Michael Bay, The Rock takes everything that was popular about action blockbusters in the '90s and dialed it to eleven: slow-motion explosions, lengthy car chases, and bloody shoot-outs, to name a few.
The film has developed a reputation for this stylistic excess, with many critics rallying around the project in recent years despite a lukewarm reception upon its release in 1996.
It's among the few films with a Rotten Tomatoes score as low of 68% to still make it onto Rolling Stone's list, and much of that comes down to the revisionist praise that it's received in recent decades. At the time, it was just another action blockbuster; today, it's a charming reminder of an era of filmmaking that doesn't really exist anymore.
The film stars Nicolas Cage, Sean Connery, and Ed Harris, telling a story of an FBI chemist and SAS captain who are tasked with disarming missiles from a rogue group of domestic terrorists who've taken control of Alcatraz Island.
It's exactly the kind of high-stakes, no-nonsense story that was so popular at this time, and it resonated with audiences right away. The Rock was a commercial success, pulling in an impressive $335 million worldwide against a reported budget of $75 million (via Box Office Mojo).
However, over ten years after the film's initial release and success, The Rock became the subject of a massive political controversy surrounding the Iraq War.
Several years after the fact, the United Kingdom launched an official investigation into the necessity and timeliness of its involvement in the war. The inquiry found that intelligence regarding Saddam Hussein's procurement of weapons of mass destruction was greatly exaggerated, and the country had not explored sufficient peaceful options before entering the war.
In fact, the inquiry even revealed that many of the United Kingdom's biggest fears about Iraq had been provided by a false agent who based his reports on the events of The Rock, leading the Secret Intelligence Service to overestimate the danger of WMDs in the Middle East.
It's not every day that a '90s action blockbuster about disarming missiles accidentally pushes one of the world's superpowers into a foreign war, but that's exactly what The Rock's legacy looks like today. An incredible action film in its own right, and one that pushed filmmaking forward with Michael Bay's signature excess of style, but equally one with an unfortunate inheritance.
This story was originally published by Men's Journal on May 19, 2026, where it first appeared in the News section. Add Men's Journal as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
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This story was originally published May 19, 2026 at 9:20 AM.