The United States government is about to launch its brand new super code. Impossible to break, or so they thought until it was broken by a nine year old autistic boy. Now the bodies are piling up to keep it secret and the mercury is rising. Shadowy elements in the NSA target a nine-year old autistic savant for death when he is able to decipher a top secret code. It was just a matter of time before Bruce hit a slump. 1998 was a bad year. The Fifth Element was good, but The Siege, Armageddon and Mercury Rising were stretching it for the star. Not that they are a complete waste, but they are for fans only.<br/><br/>I work with children who have autism, so I naturally like the fact that they are featured and hope that it helps people understand the disease a little more. So, it was a good story for me, and Willis' acting with the boy probably got him the role in The Sixth Sense.<br/><br/>Alec Baldwin plays the government official you love to hate as he is effective in displaying why we distrust the government so much. Hope that comment doesn't get me sent to Guantanamo.<br/><br/>Maybe not entirely realistic, but good job by Willis and a good thriller. There must be about a million action/thriller movies available these days. Some of them are good, some of them are great, and some of them are horrible. While `Mercury Rising' certainly doesn't fall into the last category, I would stop short of calling it `great.'<br/><br/>The largest flaw here is one of the most devastating nature you could expect: the story needs some serious work. If this were a novel, people wouldn't keep reading very far. At least, not critical people. The same goes for viewers, whether they know it or not.<br/><br/>Willis plays a rather cliche sort of action hero. At one point in time, he was a great man. Now he is a rather worn version of his former self. If you remember `Die Hard with a Vengeance,' then you get the idea. As the movie starts, he is trying to stop a robbery from turning deadly. As an under-cover agent, he is within the walls of a small siege. Just before he can stop it from turning into a bloodbath, someone on the outside gives the order to charge. In the chaos that follows, a young, teenage boy is shot to death by the government.<br/><br/>The scene is quite important. It serves as Willis' motivation for most of the rest of the movie. You see, he is going to be protecting an autistic boy from the government, who has found that he knows the code to their top secret military code.<br/><br/>When you watch, you quickly realize that there's no clear-cut villain. In an effort to make sure the villain was somewhat sympathetic, the writer went to far. Alec Baldwin plays a man who heads up a top secret branch of the government. He orders the murder of a child to save lives. The thing is, this actually makes sense. He is sacrificing one for the many.<br/><br/>In fact, you almost wish Baldwin would win, just because his logic works. Willis, on the other hand, works only to ease his own guilt. He works through the movie, mostly just pulling the boy out of the way of trains, so that the autistic child won't have to die. Of course, that means the code will remain 'not secret.' We're all supposed to cheer for Willis.<br/><br/>Don't get me wrong. I believe Baldwin's intention of having the boy killed is perhaps excessive. But Willis doesn't come across as a real saint, and Baldwin is a pathetic villain. In fact, you don't see him much. His only true menace comes from the fact that it's mostly night when you see him, and that he can order men to kill.<br/><br/>I don't expect a lot from the story of a movie like this. All I ask from a thriller is that it give me a villain to hate, a protagonist to love, a story with a twist or two, and some serious action. Any of those elements that appear in `Mercury Rising' are watered down, at best. At worst, they're enough to render this movie worse than average. An anemic time-waster you've seen before that fails to create tension or generate the suspense this genre cries out for.
Talejam replied
365 weeks ago