A group of renegade marine commandos seizes a stockpile of chemical weapons and takes over Alcatraz, with 81 tourists as hostages. Their leader, a former highly-decorated U.S. general, demands $100 million to be paid in ransom, as restitution to families of Marines who died in covert operations and were thereby denied compensation. Otherwise, he is threatening to launch 15 rockets carrying deadly VX nerve gas into the San Francisco Bay area. An elite SEAL team, with support from an FBI chemical warfare expert (Stanley Goodspeed) and a former Alcatraz escapee (John Patrick Mason), is assembled to penetrate the terrorists' defenses on Alcatraz and neutralize the rocket threat before time runs out.

Quentin Tarantino was an uncredited screenwriter on this film, along with Jonathan Hensleigh and Aaron Sorkin.

Stanley Goodspeed:
Why didn't you just tell them were the microfilm was and create a solution?


John Mason:
The moment they had the microfilm, they'd suicide me. Some solution.

Miscellaneous: The monitor loudspeakers used at the tribute band concert are not covered with a metal grille, making them extremely fragile e.g. when stepped on (which is likely to happen a lot with a heavy rock band). Almost all speaker enclosures have some sort of protection for the woofer(s).

Written by John Phillips
Performed by Scott McKenzie
Courtesy of Epic Records
By Arrangement with Sony Music Licensing