Retro Film Review: Mercury Rising (1998)
Hollywood formulas can at times be damaging even to the films that actually don't deserve to sink into mediocrity. Those films feature decent direction, decent acting and even the script hints of some sort of originality. However, by the time those films appear to cinemas or video stores, they prove to be pointless to everyone except to people who, by some chance, didn't watch a single film in their lives. Mercury Rising, 1998 action thriller directed by Harold Becker, is one of those films.
Protagonist of the film is Art Jeffries (played by Bruce Willis), FBI agent who tries to live by high ethical standards. When his trigger- happy boss causes needless death of teenagers, Jeffries expresses his dissatisfaction in the manner that would all but end his career in the Bureau. His chance to redeem himself comes after Simon Lynch (played by Miko Hughes), 9 year old autistic boy, manages to solve certain newspaper puzzle. It turns out that the puzzle was test for "Mercury", supersecret code used by NSA. When Lt. Colonel Kudrow (played by Alec Baldwin) learns about 2 billion US$ of taxpayer's money being wasted on something that could be cracked by autistic boy, his reaction is swift and simple - he sends "cleaner" (played by Lindsey Ginter) to eliminate the problem. The killer takes out boy's parents, while young Simon survives. Jeffries gets involved in the investigation and decides to protect the boy. Later he would have to deal not only with government killers, but also with his superiors.
Formulaic nature of Mercury Rising could be seen at the very beginning. The overlong prologue serves only to convince even the most idiotic member of the audience that the protagonist is a decent man. This is just one of the many cliches in the script by Lawrence Konner and Mark Rosenthal. There are scenes that establish protagonist being at odds with his superiors, scenes in which gets frustrated with the lack of family life, scenes in which the main villain turns into hyperventilating Gary Oldman impersonator, scenes in which covert government assassin tries to signal his real job even to the dumbest member of the public and, of course, obligatory scene in which the hero and main villain try to settle their differences with fists. On the other hand, Mercury Rising, despite its formulaic nature, has somewhat intriguing premise and the acting, especially in the case of young Miko Hughes, is good. Bruce Willis is always dependable in this sort of roles, while Alec Baldwin with his over the top performance almost turns this serious thriller into parody of itself. One of the more interesting things about Mercury Rising is the appearance of Lindsay Ginter who played almost exactly the same character in the first seasons of The X-Files.
Mercury Rising can be watched, but few of the audience would impress with it. Viewers don't need the skills of mathematical genius to crack its code.
RATING: 4/10 (+)
(Note: The text in its original form was posted in Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.films.reviews on May 15th 2004)
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