Mercury Rising

This article is about the movie. For the professional wrestling event, see DGUSA Mercury Rising.

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Mercury Rising
Promotional film poster
Directed by	Harold Becker
Produced by	Brian Grazer Karen Kahela
Written by	Novel: Ryne Douglas Pearson Screenplay: Lawrence Konner Mark Rosenthal
Starring	Bruce Willis Alec Baldwin Miko Hughes
Music by	John Barry
Cinematography	Michael Seresin
Editing by	Peter Honess
Release date(s)	April 3, 1998
Running time	Theatrical: 108 min.
Country	United States

Mercury Rising is a 1998 action thriller film starring Bruce Willis and Alec Baldwin. Directed by Harold Becker, the movie is based on Ryne Douglas Pearson's 1996 novel originally published as Simple Simon. Willis plays Art Jeffries, an undercover FBI agent who protects a nine year old boy with autism who is targeted by assassins after cracking a top secret government code.

Plot

A cryptographic code called "Mercury" was created by the National Security Agency, so complex that its creators believe no computer on earth can decipher it. Originally created during the Reagan Administration as a test to keep the United States' highest priority secrets under wraps, their assumption is revealed to be false when they receive a message from an autistic savant boy named Simon Lynch (Miko Hughes) who calls a telephone number written in the code which was secretly published in a puzzle magazine by two of the creators to see if anyone could break it. Colonel Kudrow (Alec Baldwin) sees the boy's ability to decipher the code as a liability and seeks to silence Simon, sending a hit man to murder Simon and his family.

After killing the boy's parents, the assassin searches the house, fails to find Simon, and leaves at the sound of approaching sirens. Art Jeffries (Bruce Willis) is an undercover FBI agent who protects Simon. He finds Simon hiding in a cache of his bedroom closet and takes the boy under his wing. Jeffries begins to realize the difficulty of protecting, let alone questioning Simon, because of his impaired social abilities as a result of his autism. The situation is further complicated by the fact that nobody at the FBI believes Simon is in any danger, and Jeffries is soon painted by the NSA as a kidnapper, with only Jeffries' best friend and fellow agent Thomas Jordan (Chi McBride) aware that he did not commit the crime.

Meanwhile, Colonel Kudrow, upset by disagreement over how to handle the case, murders one of his employees when he starts to reveal the Mercury plans to Jeffries. The murdered employee's friend turns to Jeffries for help; although shortly after he is murdered too, he manages to leave crucial evidence of Kudrow's crimes, which his girlfriend takes to the F.B.I. and Jordan discreetly arranges for her to meet with Jeffries, and she shows them the evidence. After Jeffries introduces himself to Kudrow at his birthday party, and demands that Kudrow lay off Simon Lynch, Jeffries arranges for Simon to go into Witness Protection.

Although Kudrow tries to have the F.B.I. director help him stop Jeffries and demands that Jordan tell him where Jeffries is, after Kudrow leaves Jordan shows the evidence to the F.B.I. director and he confirms that the fingerprint markings on it that he had checked confirmed the evidence against Kudrow is real. Jeffries and a small F.B.I. task force led by Jordan has set a trap in which Kudrow is killed and the boy saved. The film ends with Jeffries visiting Simon at his school, who embraces him as a welcome friend, having accepted him as a person of his trust.

Cast

• Bruce Willis as Art Jeffries
• Miko Hughes as Simon Lynch
• Alec Baldwin as Lieutenant Colonel Nicholas Kudrow
• Chi McBride as FBI Agent Thomas 'Tommy' Jordan
• Kim Dickens as Stacey Siebring
• John Carroll Lynch as Martin Lynch
• Kelley Hazen as Jenny Lynch
• Lindsey Lee Ginter as Peter Burrell

Reception

The film received mostly negative reviews from film critics, garnering an 18% approval rating at Rotten Tomatoes.^[1]

Bruce Willis won the 1999 Golden Raspberry for his performance. Miko Hughes, however, won the category of Best Performance in a Feature Film - Leading Young Actor at the 1999 Young Artist Awards for his portrayal of Simon.

Box office

The film earned $10,104,715 in its opening weekend in 2,386 theaters. The film grossed $32,935,289 in the United States and $60,172,000 internationally for a total of $93,107,289.

References

External links

• Mercury Rising at the Internet Movie Database
• Box office information