Mercury Rising (1998)
Director: Harold Becker Cast: Bruce Willis, Alec Baldwin, Miko Hughes, Chi McBride, Kim Dickens Screenplay: Lawrence Konner, Mark Rosenthal Producers: Brian Grazer, Karen Kehela Runtime: 108 min. US Distribution: Universal Rated R: language, violence
By Nathaniel R. Atcheson (nate@pyramid.net)
I just don't understand why Bruce Willis lends his talents to films as bland and uninspired as Mercury Rising. It seems like every film he does is just another action film, designed to fade from memory almost immediately after viewing. I, for one, think he's a terrific actor (see Mortal Thoughts if you don't believe me). And he can do a great job, even in generic, formulaic action films like this one. But action films as great as Die Hard come around about once a decade, and so my advice to Mr. Willis is as follows: move into another genre (and do it fast!).
In Mercury Rising, he plays Art Jeffries, a lonely FBI agent who normally works undercover, but is forced into more menial jobs such as wire tapping after the introductory-action sequence ends in the needless death of five militia men. Skip ahead a few days, and we meet young Simon (Miko Hughes), an autistic boy who cracks a government supercode hidden in a puzzle magazine. The head of the operation that uses this special code is a man named Kudrow (Alec Baldwin), and he tries to have Simon and his family executed. Naturally, the parents bite it early, but Simon lives long enough for Jeffries to find him and take care of him.
Mercury Rising is straight formula, played with poker-face stiffness by director Harold Becker. It has all the familiar scenes, such as the intro scene that proves our hero is really committed to his job, and the windy climax at the top of a building, where the lives of three or four individuals are dangling off the edge. There's barely an original moment in this film: everything from the setup to the conclusion is predictable and stale, and is made watchable only by the performers.
Willis, as I stated, is a great actor, and he's good here. I liked the fact that he isn't just another burn-out cop, but that he is actually a pretty level-headed individual. Some of the scenes are fuelled by Willis' charismatic performance, such as the opening scene (which is actually very intense, despite its predictable outcome and purpose). Miko Hughes also does a pretty good job of playing the autistic kid, although I would have preferred that the autism been given more thought and not just been used as a plot hook. Baldwin is good as the bad guy, but like all action-film bad guys, he's not very human, and present just to serve the story.
Some of the stuff in this film is downright absurd. There's a subplot involving a woman, Stacey (Kim Dickens), who Jeffries literally meets on the street somewhere. He asks her to take care of Simon for a few minutes, and she agrees. Later, he shows up at her house and demands more babysitting. The plausibility problems with this situation could have been instantly solved by making Stacey a woman that Jeffries knew beforehand. And everything about the government code is silly: the technicians explain why they placed the code in the puzzle book, but it still doesn't make much sense. And what does the code do, anyway? Well, we're told that it protects the identities of important individuals, but how or why is never explained.
And I might have been able to overlook these things, had the story been more original. But it's not. Mercury Rising fits the far-too-familiar action film template down to the last detail, and the result is an uninspired, forgettable movie that, in the end, is only worth watching for Bruce Willis' unwavering conviction for his roles. This is just another entry in a big pile of films that he's too good to be in.
** out of **** (5/10, C)
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Nathaniel R. Atcheson
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