Mercury Rising

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Year:	1998
Country of origin:	USA
Director:	Harold Becker
Genre:	Actionless action thriller
Starring:	Bruce Willis, Kim Dickens, Alec Baldwin, Miko Hughes
Rating:	2/5
IMDB link:	http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120749/
Tagline:	Someone knows too much.
Favourite line:	None worth mentioning

We all love Bruce Willis, don’t we?
His white vests, his semi-whispered, menacing tones, his big, horse-like head.
What's not to love?
Here he attempts what few action hero's have tried before: to bring a touch of tenderness to his Alpha Male status.

The plot:
An autistic kid, Simon, inadvertantly cracks a top secret code that some boffins had, for reasons that were never satisfactorily explained, placed in a word puzzle book. Upon cracking the code, a telephone number is revealed which Simon duly dialled, kick starting a chain of events that begins with a rather nasty Government Agency sort arriving at his home and shooting his parents cold dead. As luck would have it, Simon secreted himself in a little cubby hole that the Agent was unable to find.
Arriving on scene, Bruce locates the kid using the power of a mobile phones dialling tone and quickly determines that, if he doesn't protect the little blighter, he'll go the way of his parents. So begins what is effectively a chase thriller, as the organisation behind the code go all out to track Simon down to off him.

All sounds perfectly reasonable for an action thriller, however far fetched.
But there are serious issues here.
The saccharine levels are set to puke factor nine, with Willis' devotion to the kid manifested by a John Barry score that will have you reaching for the nearest sick bowl and blowing your own kidneys out of your mouth.
The child actor himself is pretty useless.
Look here, I don't expect DeNiroesque performances from child actors, but they must at least be tolerable. In fact, at times, the movie is rendered almost unwatchable as every time anyone goes near him, Simon starts squealing like a pig in heat, a high pitched keen that shreds the nerves and numbs the lugholes.
Listen up, I've got every sympathy for children with autism - I've even taught some of the little buggers - but I can glean no pleasure from a movie where the central character is so blighted. Call me a monster if you must, but the autism itself is not the issue, it's the damn wailing. I've chosen a life without children and am fortunate to be blessed with a companion who plans to keep her eggs very much to herself, no fertilisation necessary, so this became almost painful for the pair of us.
An additional problem is the limited amount of action. Now, forgive me once more, but if something is labelled an action thriller, I expect plenty of action and plenty of thrills, and this movie failed to deliver on both counts.
So, much as I hate to be coarse, this was just a bit shit.