DESCRIPTION:
The Rock is a 1996 action film that primarily takes place on Alcatraz Island, and the San Francisco Bay area. It was directed by Michael Bay, director of Bad Boys, and stars Sean Connery, Nicolas Cage, and Ed Harris. It was produced by Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer, producers of Top Gun and Crimson Tide, and released through Disney's Hollywood Pictures. The film is dedicated to Simpson, who died five months before its release. This was the first film on which Cage and Bruckheimer worked together.

A group of rogue Marines led by disenchanted Brigadier General Francis Hummel (Ed Harris) seizes a stockpile of rockets armed with VX gas, a chemical weapon. Hummel seizes Alcatraz Island and takes 81 tourists hostage in the prison cells, threatening the Pentagon with launching the rockets against the population of San Francisco unless the government pays ransom and reparations to the families of Marines who died on illegal, clandestine missions. The Pentagon and FBI develop a plan to retake the island with a Navy SEAL team, enlisting chemical weapons expert Stanley Goodspeed (Nicolas Cage).
In need of first-hand knowledge of Alcatraz, FBI Director Womack (John Spencer) is forced to turn to prisoner John Mason (Sean Connery), the only inmate of Alcatraz to ever successfully escape. Though Mason escapes custody and leads the FBI on a high-speed chase through the streets of San Francisco to see his estranged daughter, Goodspeed convinces him to aid the mission.
With Mason's guidance, the team infiltrates Alcatraz, but is ambushed by Hummel's marines, leaving only Mason and Goodspeed alive. They disable the rockets one-by-one until they are captured. With the incursion team lost, the military readies a backup plan, an attack by armed F-18s that will neutralize the poison gas but kill everyone on the island.
As Mason uses his unique experience to escape from their cells, he reveals why he was held there for so many years—for stealing a microfilm of the United States' most closely-guarded secrets. While they search for the final two rockets, Hummel fires one but aborts it, convincing his mercenaries that he has only been bluffing. They revolt, fatally wounding him in a firefight and proceeding with the plan to fire on San Francisco. With his last breath, Hummel tells Goodspeed the location of the last rocket. As the armed jets approach, Goodspeed disarms it but is attacked and uses the VX to defend himself. Dying from the gas, he injects himself in the heart with the antidote and lights green flares to signal that the threat is over—but only after one of the pilots fires, sending Goodspeed's body flying into the sea.
Mason reappears to pull the unconscious Goodspeed to shore, who gives him time to escape before the FBI arrives, telling Womack he's been "vaporized." The film ends with Goodspeed and his pregnant bride Carla in Fort Walton, Kansas, on the advice of a note from Mason, recovering the microfilm with a half century of state secrets.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rock_%28film%29