Mercury Rising

Mercury Rising is a competent thriller which Bruce Willis, as usual, helps to make worth watching. It seems to me that by now I have seen quite a few films with Willis in the lead as a wisecracking, devil-may-care hero, but I never tire of it. John McClane from "Die Hard" or Art Jeffries, the difference is impossible to spot.

Willis's co-star in "Mercury Rising" is Miko Hughes, who plays the autistic boy Simon Lynch, who becomes a threat to national security when he deciphers a code placed in a crossword magazine to nerd-test the security of the coding technique. General Kudrow believes Simon poses such a great threat that he has Simon and his parents eliminated. When FBI agent Art Jeffries is put on the case, Mr and Mrs Lynch have been found dead after what looks like a domestic drama, but their son has disappeared. Art finds Simon and at the same time senses that something is stark raving wrong. He does everything to protect Simon, even though the boy and the man are soon being hunted by both Art's own people and Kudrow's. It comes as no surprise that it is the powerful Kudrow who comes off worst and not Art, but there is nothing wrong with the suspense all the same. The ending is Hollywood through and through. At any rate, I found myself with tears in my eyes.