The Rock (film) Quotations

The Rock is a 1996 film about a Marine General (Francis Hummel) who seizes Alcatraz Island with a platoon of mercenaries, taking hostages and threatening to launch several rockets armed with VX poison gas into the heart of San Francisco. Stanley Goodspeed, an FBI chemical weapons expert, must team up with John Patrick Mason, a former Alcatraz inmate and British spy, to neutralize the VX rockets before they can be launched.

General Francis X. Hummel

We'll be branded as traitors. The gravest capital crime, punishable by death. A few hundred years ago, a couple of guys named Jefferson and Adams were branded traitors by the British - today they're called patriots.

Dialogue

Chief of Staff Hayden Sinclair: Three tours in Vietnam, Panama, Grenada, Desert Storm, three Purple Hearts, two Silver Stars and the Congressional Medal of–Jesus. This man is a hero.

General Al Kramer: Well, I think "legend" might be a better description, Mr. Sinclair.

Sinclair: Yeah, well, now we can add kidnapping and extortion to his list of accolades.

Gen. Kramer: [mildly indignant] Mr. Sinclair, General Hummel is a man of honor.

General Hummel: How old are you Chief of Staff Sinclair?

Chief of Staff Hayden Sinclair: I'm 33-

General Hummel: Well you've probably got no fucking idea what I'm talking about. By your ninth birthday I was running black ops through Laos and southern China. My men were responsible for over 200 enemy kills. Can somebody put some rigging tape over Mr. Sinclair's mouth, he's wasting my time!

Carla: You didn't really mean what you said about bringing a child into this world...being an act of cruelty, did you?

Goodspeed: I meant it at the time.

Carla: Stanley, at the time you said it seven and a half seconds ago!

Goodspeed: Well, gosh, kind of a lot's happened since then.

[Mason just had his haircut]

John Mason: So what's in it for me Womack when this is over?

FBI Director James Womack: You get your life back, Mason.

Mason: You could have given my life back years ago. [walks away, but turns back to Womack] So why should I trust you now?

Womack: You've got my word.

Mason: Will you shake on it? [Womack nods. Both men shake hands but Mason attaches a rope on Womack's hand and throws him off the balcony.]

Commander Anderson: Have you ever been in a combat situation?

Goodspeed: Define combat, Sir.

Commander Anderson: Shep?

LT Shepherd: An incursion underwater to re-take an impregnable fortress held by an elite team of US Marines in possession of 81 hostages and 15 guided rockets armed with VX poison gas.

Goodspeed: Oh. In that case, no, Sir.

Mason: Are you sure you're ready for this? [walks up staircase]

Goodspeed: I'll do my best.

Mason: [stops and motions back to Goodspeed] Your best? Losers always whine about their best. Winners go home and fuck the prom queen!

Goodspeed: Carla was the prom queen.

Mason: [faintly impressed] Really?

Goodspeed: [Cocks his gun] Yeah!

[Mason and Goodspeed are defusing a poison gas rocket]

Mason: What exactly does this stuff do?

Goodspeed: If the rocket renders it aerosol, it could take out an entire city of people.

Mason: Really? And what happens if you drop one?

Goodspeed: Happily, it'd just wipe out you and me.

Mason: How?

Goodspeed: It's a cholinesterase inhibitor. Stops the brain from sending nerve messages down the spinal cord within thirty seconds. Any epidermal exposure or inhalation and you'll know. A twinge at the small of your back as the poison seizes your nervous system- [Mason has lifted the chem round to look at it] Do NOT move that! Your muscles freeze, you can't breathe, you spasm so hard you break your own back and spit your guts out. But that's after your skin melts off.

Mason: [wide-eyed] My God.

Goodspeed: Oh, I think we'd like God on our side at the moment, don't you?

Gen. Hummel: The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. Thomas Jefferson.

Mason: Patriotism is a virtue of the vicious, according to Oscar Wilde. [Hummel strikes him in the back of the neck] Thank you for making my point.

Goodspeed: [Holding VX nerve gas] Do you know how this shit works?

Capt. Darrow: [Holding his knife] Do you know how this shit works?! [flashes his knife] Come on, come on, I don't need the gun. I'll put it down, come on. Let's play! Come on, come on!

Goodspeed: Listen, I think we got off on the wrong foot. Stan Goodspeed, FBI. Uh, let's talk music. Do you like the Elton John song "Rocket Man"?

Capt. Darrow: I don't like soft-ass shit!

Goodspeed: Oh, oh you don't, ok. Well, I only ask because it's you. You're the rocket man! [he fires the rocket out the window, taking Darrow with it] How do you like how that shit works?!

[Goodspeed just told the FBI that Mason is dead and Womack destroyed his pardon]

John Mason: Well, Stanley, I guess this is where we go our separate ways. I understand that you know the etymology of your name, Goodspeed.

Stanley Goodspeed: God speed, to wish someone a prosperous journey. Why?

Mason: If you fancy a journey, I recommend Fort Walton, Kansas.

Goodspeed: I was thinking of Maui.

Mason: [puts something into Goodspeed's hand] Forget Maui.

Goodspeed: [reads piece of paper] St Michael's Church, Fort Walton, Kansas. Front pew, right leg, hollow. Is this what I think it is-[looks back at Mason, but he's disappeared] MASON!