"You alert the media, I launch the gas. You refuse payment, I launch the gas. You've got forty hours, until noon, day after tomorrow, to arrange transfer of the money. I am aware of your countermeasure. You know and I know it doesn't stand a chance. Hummel from Alcatraz, out."
Ed Harris delivers a scene-stealing performance as a highly decorated military soldier seeking repatriation for the soldiers under his command. These men died undecorated or without any military funeral despite their services to their country. Whereas Rane was in it for himself, Hummel had a very different cause, something us audiences could understand. What made him a terrorist was the way he went about achieving his cause. Holding San Francisco hostage with a deadly stockpile of deadly VX gasarmed M55 rockets isn't perhaps the best method to achieve his goals but it certainly gets the US government's attention. Cue Nicholas Cage and Sean Connery to take him down and deliver one of the most exciting, underrated action movies of the 90s. Of course, Hummel is no fool. He has the intelligence, the fighting skills and the passion to defeat anyone who opposes him and that makes him very, very dangerous. The Method Behind His Madness To extort $100 million from the US Government to pay the troops and their families that died under his command. The Degree Of Terror And Destruction He Leaves In His Wake Fortunately for the people of San Francisco we didn't get to see the devastation caused by the VX gas, though we did get a preview of it's horrific effects early on in the film. His Sheer Force Of Character A man in absolute control of the situation. A man who will tell the Chief Of Staff to shut up and get away with it as this scene easily proves.