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MERCURY RISING
Now that the "evil empire" of the USSR has been emasculated, writers have had to find new villains. In Simple Simon, author Ryne Douglas Peardon, did not have to look beyond our own back yard. Here the villain is Lt. Colonel Nicholas Kudrow (Alec Baldwin) a high-up official in the covert, secretive NSA, (National Security Agency) who upon discovering that a top secret code had been broken by a 10-year-old kid, is out to get him even if it means killing him.
The kid is Simon, (Miko Hughes) an autistic savant. In an attempt to find him, his parents are killed by NSA agents. Art Jeffries (Bruce Willis) is an FBI man who has been made a scapegoat in an earlier episode, is relegated to routine work. That suddenly blossoms into something big when he discovers Simon and the 2 murdered parents. He decides to take care of Simon and protect him from the NSA.
This may have sounded exciting on paper but Bruce Willis and his monotone voice and equally mono-expression is hardly the one to bring you to the edge of your seat. While actor Miko Hughes was allowed to witness autistic children, the better to portray them, the director allowed him to do little more than roll his eyes upward and to the side. That soon became boring even if in real life that is how some autistic children behave. This is a movie; it needs more than that. Much more. Further, very little was shown that would demonstrate he was a savant.
The film, in addition, is very violent, with the F word tossed about carelessly. I lost count of the number of bullets fired but it must have been well into the hundreds. Very gory. But the worst sin is that it was boring.
Alec Baldwin has a smallish role until the last scenes. Tommy B Jordan (Chi McBride) is the only government person who is a friend of Jeffries. McBride comes across as ready to take on some meatier roles.
Directed by Harold Becker.
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Copyright 1998 Ben Hoffman
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