Review of Mercury Rising (1998) by Mike S — 24 Sep 2009

Implausible, but maintains the suspense for the most part. The implausibility is not so much in the premise that an autistic boy could mentally decrypt a government top-secret code (okay, it's not possible, but I'm willing to go with it to see where it leads), but in the idea that the U.

S. government would kill its own citizens to protect that code (and this movie was made *before* 9/11 and all the anti-terror laws that came in after it). Unfortunately, that idea drives the entire plot.

In addition, it seems like various government agents were breaking all sorts of rules and procedures to protect the boy or kill him. And no one seemed to be making much fuss about the growing body count.

If you can get past these flaws, this thriller does a pretty good job. Alec Baldwin is a suitably amoral villain and Willis is his usual lone-wolf action-hero self. I was a bit confused about geography, because I think the autisitc boy lived in Chicago, but some of the action seemed to take place in Washington, D.

C. Towards the end of the movie, I really didn't know where the characters were, not that it mattered much. I liked it, but I wouldn't watch it a second time.