Mercury Rising

FBI agent Art Jeffries is a rebel within his own clan, and is demoted to a rookie officer’s job until he bucks up. While on an open-and-shut case, Jeffries runs into an autistic child, who was able to decipher an elaborate governmental code in a magazine, and suddenly finds himself attached to this kid’s safety. Covert agents from the government are after the boy, and want him, and anyone else who knows about the discovery, dead.

Sub-par movie, this film doesn’t truly live up to anything, because it doesn’t offer enough action to be considered an “action movie”, nor enough thrills to be considered a “thriller”. Its dramatic touches are far from effective, so skip the drama category, and its semi-witty repartees don’t amount to a hill of beans in regards to a legitimate comedy. So what is it? Who knows! It certainly isn’t a great picture, but it does offer an interesting premise, a good actor in the kid who play the autistic child, and a few moments of quasi-action scenes. It also offers a one-dimensional, overacting bad guy in Alec Baldwin (Sure Alec, it’s all about patriotism…..yawn.), many, and I do mean many plot holes (Which may, or may not bother you, depending on the type of movie-watcher you are), and a weak conclusion. All in all, a film in which the title character resembles and acts like the John McClane character from the DIE HARD series, but put them head to head in an ultimate cage-match, and McClane would chomp this pup’s cheezy one-liners, and fake concern for breakfast. Bruce, it’s time to listen for the bell, my friend, cause it seems to be tolling for thee.

(c) 2021 Berge Garabedian