Chapter 72: Sensationalism to the Extreme

Per the organizers' requirements, Sarah and her cameraman temporarily handed over their cameras and recording equipment before entering the viewing area. Perhaps because they represented the Los Angeles Times, they had excellent seats right up near a round table in the front row. Before the movie began, a waiter even brought over delicious food and drinks.

But Sarah had no interest in the food or beverages. For the past few years, she had harbored a specific goal and plan: to become a professional film critic, and one who could break into the very top tier. The income and industry influence of a top-tier critic dwarfed anything an entertainment reporter could ever hope for. Take Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times, for example. His official salary might barely match the entertainment desk's editor-in-chief, but his hidden income behind the scenes could reach seven figures a year!

Unfortunately, while becoming a professional film critic was easy enough, breaking into the upper echelon was incredibly difficult. That required the vigorous support of major media outlets and film conglomerates.

Since last year, Sarah had been practicing writing reviews. A few had even been published in local Los Angeles newspapers and magazines, but their influence could only be described as better than nothing.

Pulling a fountain pen and a notepad from her clutch, Sarah waited for five minutes before the curtain slowly rose on The Rock.

Just like Speed, after the iconic Warner Brothers logo and the bare-bones Duke Studio opening, the film cut straight to the point, starting with a beautiful panoramic shot.

Accompanied by the heavy, solemn background music of French horns, Sarah watched a slow-motion sequence of several soldiers marching with a coffin. The shot then cut to a general sitting and smoking. A series of rapid cuts followed, continuously bouncing between the general and the soldiers, with each shot lingering for only a fleeting moment.

Normally, it would be difficult to glean any concrete information from such slightly chaotic, spliced-together footage, let alone grasp its specific narrative meaning.

Yet, under the director's concise yet gorgeous execution, set to the deep, resonant music of the film's opening and layered with a character's voice-over, Sarah could fully feel that an extraordinary story was about to unfold.

Right from the start, Sarah was handed a clear message: this general was bound to do something extraordinary, an act laced with a sense of tragic heroism.

Even though the opening consisted entirely of slow-motion shots, Sarah still felt the film moved at a blistering pace. The number of shots was immense, most presented at an altered frame rate and lasting only a fleeting moment—averaging around two seconds each. It gave the audience a sense of steady weight paired with explosive kinetic energy.

'From a pure cinematography and production standpoint, Duke Rosenberg's improvement is incredibly obvious.'

She had seen and analyzed Speed. While its opening sequence was engaging, it had been far too ordinary. The opening of The Rock, however, was not only unconventional but also easy to understand and immensely captivating, making the audience impatient to see how the plot would unfold.

Taking advantage of the torrential rain pouring on the screen, Sarah quickly glanced around. Aside from the booming sound system, the open-air theater was dead silent. Everyone in her line of sight had their eyes glued to the giant screen. Her cameraman, in particular, was still holding his knife and fork in a steak-cutting posture, completely dumbfounded and immersed in the movie.

'Your films always possess this kind of magic,' Sarah thought. 'A pacing so tight it leaves people breathless.'

The film entered its second phase. General Hummel led his men to break into the Navy armory to hijack missiles. The scene opened with a wide-angle panoramic long shot of the naval base.

The pitch-black night, the torrential rain, and the heavily saturated visuals gave Sarah a strong sense of visual impact. Even though all the action sequences were presented in slow motion, the soldiers somehow appeared exceptionally agile, their movements as clean and decisive as a sweeping gale.

The rapidly advancing plot and the oppressive shifts in pacing left absolutely no room for thought. Through the quick cuts and the soaring background music, Sarah fully experienced the movie's kinetic momentum and concise beauty.

She could see from the film's rapidly changing tempo that the cuts matched the rhythmic beats of the plot perfectly. Simply put, when the visuals snapped to a fast pace, the soldiers took down enemies one by one, firing up the audience's emotions. But the moment one of General Hummel's men died due to a leaking poison gas missile, the tempo abruptly slowed down, unconsciously letting the horror and dread of the toxic gas settle heavily into the viewers' minds.

Next, the film moved into a transitional sequence, yet it still maintained its blistering pace and oppressive tension. It also appropriately sprinkled in comedic moments perfectly suited for the Summer Season atmosphere. This deadpan humor was amusing without being crass—the delusional attempt to convince General Hummel to surrender through dialogue; the effort to persuade Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Womack to release John Mason simply because the man had successfully escaped from Alcatraz Island, resulting in Womack suffering a dislocated shoulder; forcing Goodspeed, a chemical weapons expert with zero combat experience, directly into battle, prompting him to run to the bathroom and vomit bile first...

'Using humor to ease the audience's tense nerves, avoiding the risk of endless, fast-paced action scenes causing the viewers to check out from exhaustion.'

After thinking about it for just a moment, Sarah understood the movie's intent. Duke Rosenberg could still restrain his destructive urges. He wasn't like how certain critics bashed him—only knowing how to endlessly shoehorn crashes and explosions into his movies without limit.

In Sarah's eyes, Duke Rosenberg had controlled the pacing of The Rock almost flawlessly. Up to this point in the film, about every fifteen minutes—right when the audience's nerves had just started to relax—an intense action set piece would erupt, winding their nerves tight once more.

Like the San Francisco street car chase currently playing on the screen, which almost left her suffocating.

The Hummer and the Ferrari engaged in a tense, fierce game of cat and mouse. The frequency of the cuts was blistering, with each shot averaging less than two seconds. That exhilarating thrill of the street race could only be felt by the audience witnessing the film with their own eyes.

Normally, seeing a Hummer rampaging through the streets, smashing into anything in its path, Sarah would definitely approach it from a social morality standpoint and draw certain conclusions. The stalls crushed by the Hummer, the cars destroyed, the traffic accidents caused—how severe would the consequences be? Perhaps many innocent citizens would even lose their lives.

However, the film's hyper-kinetic pacing and equally fast, punchy score completely banished such thoughts from her mind. The explosive momentum of the scene only left viewers overwhelmed and emotionally supercharged!

Swept up in the film's rhythm, Sarah tossed aside all real-world awareness, only wanting to follow the progression of the movie's plot.

Speeding cars, crashes, and explosions—these were undeniably the most cliché visuals in Hollywood. Yet, executed by Duke Rosenberg, they displayed a fresh, alternative thrill that only sent adrenaline soaring and nerves firing!

Especially when the cable car crushed the Ferrari into a metal pancake, the seating area behind them, where the regular moviegoers sat, erupted in stormy applause.

"Such a cliché trope..."

The cameraman's muttering to himself drifted over from beside her. "...yet it actually made me so tense I forgot about the good food! It almost made me forget to breathe!"

Was it cliché? It was incredibly cliché!

As a media professional aspiring to develop into a professional film critic, Sarah knew very well that ninety-nine percent of the plot in this movie could be traced back to similar tropes in past Hollywood films. Whether it was the surprise assault, the car chase, or the character setups for Mason, Goodspeed, and General Hummel, none of it was new. But when these cliché tropes were fused together by a director like Duke Rosenberg, they delivered the freshest thrill imaginable!

'This is the role of the director! This is the meaning behind the existence of an outstanding director!'

Shifting her posture, Sarah crossed her long legs, which were clad in pencil pants. It was only when a wave of numbness washed over them that she realized—since the movie began, aside from her head and hands, nothing below her neck had moved a single inch!

'If something goes wrong with my legs,' Sarah thought, 'I'll definitely hold you accountable as the director, Duke Rosenberg!'

Aside from reinterpreting cliché tropes with masterful techniques and bringing out the emotional sensationalism of action scenes—something he had already used in Speed—Duke Rosenberg also used sets and dialogue to evoke raw emotion. These methods were just like the explosions he created: simple, crude, and direct, yet the audience ate them right up.

When the strike team encountered the Marine Corps, this sensationalism was pushed to its absolute extreme.

"This is General Hummel. Put down your weapons!"

"I'm Commander Anderson, General. I'm the leader of the strike team. We know your motives, and as God is my witness, I fully agree with you. But I, too, swore an oath to defend the motherland and destroy its enemies, whether foreign or domestic! General, we have both spilled our blood on the same soil..."

"We have the high ground, and you are completely surrounded. Commander, if you value the lives of your brothers, then put down your weapons!"

"I will never give that order! To the soldiers following the General: you all swore an oath of loyalty to your country in the Marine Corps! We all have brothers in arms who bled and died on the battlefield, only for their souls to be treated like dirt by the Pentagon. But that is no reason for you to betray your country..."

As if the lines weren't enough, in the ensuing firefight, the young director once again employed high frame-rate slow-motion techniques. Through the strike team members taking bullets and collapsing one by one, paired with General Hummel's high-pitched yet powerless screams to "Cease fire," he laid bare his sensationalism once again.

These simple, crude methods were often the most effective ways to mobilize people's emotions.

For at least a moment, Sarah felt a slight sting in her nose, her ears faintly catching the sounds of muffled sobbing.

"This is a dialogue between two true soldiers! It's dripping with sheer masculinity!" Her cameraman, being a man, was clearly even more susceptible to this. "Over our ashes, noble men will shed hot tears!"

Sarah couldn't help but roll her eyes at her colleague's words. Marx's stuff didn't really suit America, did it?