Screenwriter Charles Edward Pogue and director Rob Cohen have reasonably literate fun subverting the knight genre. Funny touch: Brother Gilbert (Pete Postlethwaite), a monk and poet who follows Draco and Bowen around, trying desperately to compose an epic about their adventures, but hating his own lousy lines like ““Think me not a fool/My quest is spirichool.’’ It’s the movie’s nonparody stuff that’s clunky: the clanging sword fights, revolting (both senses) peasants and magic caves, the warrior peasant girl (gorgeous but wooden Dina Meyer) and, alas, Julie Christie, back after a nine-year absence, in a silly, ill-advised role as the evil king’s mother. But it’s Connery in drag (so to speak) who saves the day. Designer Phil Tippett and the magi at Industrial Light and Magic used clips from Connery movies (sardonic, charming, introspective, melancholy) to turn their digitized, animatronic creature into a scaly, spike-tailed, bat-winged, flame-breathing metamorphosis of Connery. The most engaging and complex special-effects creature yet, Draco is a portent of the inevitable digi-thespian, the synthetic performer whose Actors Studio will be the innards of a computer.
In ““The Rock’’ Connery is Mason, the only man who ever escaped from Alcatraz. Recaptured and re-canned for the past 30 years, Mason is conscripted to help a military team break into the disused prison, which has been seized by a band of renegade marines led by General Hummel (Ed Harris), who’s swiped some missiles armed with a new lethal gas. Hummel threatens to riddle the Bay Area with this flesh-melting aerosol if the U.S. doesn’t cough up millions to compensate for the forgotten soldiers who died in illegal covert operations. Yawn city. Again, it’s Connery to the rescue, this time aided by Nicolas Cage as Dr. Goodspeed, an FBI specialist in chemical warfare. Cage is very amusing as a nerd who de-nerds himself under fire. Connery is suave and brainy as he spouts Virgil and Oscar Wilde (no, no, it’s not his first gay role). Director Michael Bay, who’s won a lot of Golden Aardvarks for commercials and music videos, has made the ultimate MTV movie, a fusillade of images aimed at the young nervous systems who love the joys and joysticks of computer-game culture. In this arena of violent virtuality, the presence of Connery is pure balm. Tough but twinkly, sexier than all the Hollywooden young studs, purring those Celtic tones like smoky single-malt Scotch, Connery at 65 is an international treasure, the magnetic male animal comfortable in his own skin. Or a dragon’s.
