Mercury Rising

Reviewed by Dan Lybarger

April 13, 1998

Mercury Rising is a hard-edged, violent conspiracy thriller with a heart. It's too bad it lacks a brain. Bruce Willis (who seems to be a magnet for bad scripts these days) stars as a burned out FBI agent who has to protect a 9-year-old autistic savant (the annoying Miko Hughes). The lad has cracked a top-secret National Security Agency code, and now every government assassin in Chicago is after him. This movie is definitive proof that mayhem and thrills are not synonymous. For all the punching and gunplay, Mercury Rising is remarkably tedious. The slow, silly storyline reeks of déjà vu, so there's no suspense. Furthermore, the scenes where Willis tries to bond with the unresponsive and unlikable lad are excruciatingly phony. Alec Baldwin's bored and somewhat brief performance as the nemesis does provide some unintended mirth. He obviously knows the car commercials he does on the side are better written. (R) Rating: 2 --Dan Lybarger

 

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This page was last updated on 04/13/98.
Ó 1998 Dan Lybarger