Sean Connery

In The Rock (1996), Sean Connery's John Patrick Mason seems comfortably equipped for danger beside Nicolas Cage's anxious Dr Stanley Goodspeed. Connery does not have to strain for a laugh when Cage is providing so much nervous energy. We laughed at their exchanges because Mason's confidence makes Goodspeed's uncertainty funnier without making it pointless. The pauses between the action are worth waiting for, which is an achievement in a film with dialogue that sometimes gives both men little help.

That confidence was already central to his James Bond in Dr. No (1962), with the physical assurance and sardonic wit that became his most recognisable tools. His Scottish brogue survived changes of role; a different accent was rarely part of the offer. The limitation was a stiffness that could show when a character needed to express something beyond certainty. He was nevertheless looking for work beyond Bond while still playing the part.

Sidney Lumet's The Hill (1965) offered an early route away from Bond typecasting. Connery worked with Lumet on five films, enough to make the collaboration an important part of the career rather than a footnote to the franchise. Later came the mentor in The Untouchables (1987) and the father in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), alongside Harrison Ford. Those parts let his established authority do some of the work, and gave that familiar certainty a reason to be there.

Michael Bay uses that familiarity well in The Rock, letting Connery's assurance sit beside Cage's unease instead of making both men interchangeable action leads. It is loud and implausible, and the editing sometimes makes the action harder to follow than it needs to be. Connery cannot fix that, but he helps make the nonsense good company. Start there for the humour, then try The Hill for an earlier effort to put his toughness under pressure.