The-Rock

Featuring Nicolas Cage, Ed Harris, and even Sean Connery as James Bond (arguably), The Rock is Michael Bay at his finest.

It is the quintessential case of controlled excess, a sweet spot, a taming of the reckless and Bayhem-filled beast that most viewers yearn to see Bay reach once more. It results in a picture that even the most snobbish of cinephiles might not be ashamed of viewing, worthy of its inclusion in the mecca of arthouse films, The Criterion Collection. He is imprisoned for stealing a microfilm containing all of the most sensitive secrets of the United States government, a job which seems to only befall those of the most confidential individuals. All directors are arguably intertextual, and Bay becomes a utilitarian by driving the mythos of the actor and the character to make us relate with the undoubted star of the show. The sequence where Mason escapes from the hotel suite while he is being treated to a day of self-care is a typical Michael Bay chase sequence. The camera is a watchful eye at the right place at the right time. To get confused in the ruckus is the whole point, and Bay uses this as a mere entry point to a more deliberately-paced second-half. It lulls the spectator straight into a sense of being in the moment, every frame capturing the essential in the sanguinary confrontation. In a striking play out of left field, Bay humanizes the violence, and in an action film that's supposed to be an exhibition of its genre conventions, carefully extracts the emotions right out of the viewer's hearts. Often, this would be used to mask the lacking plot points and the fragmented narratives of his work. Critics and even audiences have caught up to his over-reliance on explosions, over-the-top action, and downright sub-par filmmaking whose objective is to rake in the profits rather than to present something artistic and "auteur-cinema" worthy. Bayhem, obviously a portmanteau of the word mayhem, refers to the director's chaotic and frenetic style of filmmaking.