Mercury Rising
                                                                                                    
Director: Harold Becker
Year: 1998
Rating: 6.0
This Bruce Willis vehicle is an early example of the save the child genre, one that has become fairly common over the past bunch of years. What makes this one a bit unusual is that the child is a nine year old autistic boy. A couple of the reviews on Letterbox are infuriated at how autism is portrayed. I just don't know enough to have an opinion, but will take them at their word. So, I will just leave all that aside and focus on Willis saving this boy from government assassins. It is farfetched, but suspenseful. Willis is just how we like him. Taciturn, tough, heroic and on his own. He is also paranoid and delusional according to the company psychiatrist. Perfect for an FBI agent.



In the opening scene he is undercover as a bank robber and thinks the FBI screwed it up. He punches his superior and that apparently is enough to be demoted in the FBI. But he is called into a missing child case. With two murdered parents. He finds the boy and realizes that someone is trying to kill him. The NSA in their infinite wisdom put a top secret impossible to break code into a puzzle book. The boy takes a look and breaks it. So, of course Alec Baldwin decides the boy has to die. Not much action if that is what you are looking for. More about Willis figuring out why anyone is trying to kill the boy.