Rating: 
Summary: Actually 3.5 Stars... but worth watching!
Review: Ok here we go. The bad guys are Balwin and a top secret government agency which has an encrypted code for all its agents called Mercury Rising. Well lo and behold a 9 year old Autistic boy breaks this code which was in a puzzle magazine as a test for code breaking geeks. Ummm, somehow this sounds dumber than it really is. Enter now the renegade FBI agent Willis, who somehow gets assigned to investigate the boy's parents murder. (Who were murdered by Baldwin's top secret government agency). Now that is the setting for the clashes which follow. Willis kidnaps the boy to save him from being killed. And then a all too nice of a lady Kim Dickens (who is very cute by the way)befriends Willis, :), and the Boy and helps Willis protect him. Actually Willis (A stranger) shows up at her apt. at 2am and she lets him in. Umm,? There are some very good action scenes. Great 5.1 DD sound in a few places. Overall a relatively good flick. I think Baldwin, Willis and Dickens do a good job. The 9 year old boy came across pretty credible also. Just lean back, relax and enjoy and you won't be disappointed. 3.5 STARS.
Rating:
Summary: the boy knows all
Review: one of Willis' softer more gentler side as he trys to save a young boys life from the evil clutches of the menacing Alec Baldwin. some lagin parts but its picked up by Willis' care for the kid and the ending where Baldwin flys and soars to the bottom off the building. suspense and plot take good aim here
Rating: 
Summary: Bruce Willis' preface to 'the Sixth Sense'.
Review: The actual rank I give this film is 3.5 stars.If you have a chance to watch this movie and time is not rushing your way - do it. It can all be summed up to a harmless action 'flick' , that offers the viewer a couple of hours with the old Willis' McLain we all know all to well from the 'Diehard' trilogy . In addition to that , you find a kind of routine man plus kid getaway from the bad guys thriller , which is enriched with a secondary interesting (though superficial) dramatization of the autism's syndrome . The matching of Willis with the child works quite well . My hunch is that this role had turned Night Shyamalan's attention to Willis , this attention ended up in a collaboration that was concluded in Willis' biggest blockbuster to date . This point of view makes the film more interesting , because you get a chance to watch Willis making his first steps in an uncharted territory for him . Eventually this journey brought him also the role in 'Disney's the kid' and of course in 'Unbreakable' , so it's pretty nice to see another brick in his developing career . Aside from that , the movie is vastly flawed and has lots of holes in the script and plot . I recommend a good and through review of a Canadian writer , that wrote one of the first reviews about this movie and really pointed out all the defects this product has , in a funny and humorous manner . Nevertheless , for an entertaining movie that doesn't take itself too seriously these are bearable defects you can live with . Sit down , take it easy , enter a somewhat fictitious reality and enjoy 'Mercury Rising' .
Rating: 
Summary: another boring movie
Review: The director has wasted an interesting story and the film is simply boring. Everything is expected. Not worth for wasting your time to watch it.
Rating:
Summary: Good film, bad company
Review: THe film itself is fun, but i found it really annoying that not long after I got the "regular" bar bone DVD they came out with another version that has all the extras. Can't they get it right the first time?
Rating:
Summary: Not that bad, not that bad.
Review: The story is not the smartest thing ever, but it's ok. I prefer this to The Jackal, but never against one of the Die Hard movies or his latest teamings with M. Night Shyamalan. There are some decent action scenes and the story is average, nothing spectacular.
Rating:
Summary: Predictable but well made action thriller
Review: There is nothing very new about Mercury Rising but the standard ingredients are well assembled and the end product is professional and enjoyable.
Willis plays a maverick FBI agent who blames the trigger-happiness of his superiors for the failure of an undercover mission he was involved with .This involved infiltrating a survivalist group ,and ended in the avoidable deaths of the leader's teenaged boys .For his violent reaction Willis is downgraded from undercover work to routine surveillance jobs.He is called to the scene of a shooting in a quiet Chicago suburb -a man and wife callously shot ,by what we know are NSA agents.The prime target was their 9 year old autistic son ,Simon ,who has unknowingly cracked a code ,"Mercury "that guarantees the safety of several key undercover US agents in the Middle East.The head of NSA -played with the right cold eyed precision by Alec Baldwin-has ordered the death of the child.
Willis goes on the run with the child and the movie revolves around his attempts to protect the boy ,and expose the forces hunting him down. The action that folows is predictable to an extent --car chases,rooftop shootouts and narrow escapes but it is done well and the role represents an interesting softening of the hard man Willis image in his concern for the child .More could have bben made of the autism angle but I recommend the movie for those in search of a proficient thriller which nicely balances humanity with swift and compelling action It is better than its critical reputation suggests it will be.
Rating:
Summary: A great concept, utterly defanged of any real meaning
Review: There was an article about a script writer's journey in getting his picture made. I sympathize with the guy. He was down on his luck, his rent was three months overdue, and his wife was getting seriously pissed off. The plot of his script was simple. It was about an autistic boy named Simon who can read the secret codes embedded in crossword puzzles. In other words, he took a common urban myth and wrote a script about it. Not original, but certainly compelling. Add Bruce Willis to the mix and you have a big budget movie. Then one day, his agent called. He was nervous. A major studio was offering a six figure number for the movie. When other movie studios heard about it, a war of escalation ensued. Soon, they were trying to outbid each other. The price kept climbing and climbing and climbing. Finally, the agent had enough. The script was sold. Presumably, the scriptwriter got to stay married and pay off his rent. And, I hope, socked the money away into savings. Because this movie sucks. The movie went through several title changes, a sure sign that there's a problem. It was originally supposed to be Simon Says, but the execs changed it because nobody knew what that meant. So they changed it to Mercury Rising instead. As Dr. Evil would say, "Riiiight." There's a few problems. One of them is translating onto screen the depiction of code. Apparently, the movie decides code decryption sounds like a high-pitched whining sound. Perhaps it's an accurate parallel, but it's not fun to listen to. Simon's autism is depicted a little too accurately. His parents are killed early on, so Simon's on his own and fairly incapable of doing much besides wailing his head off when touched. This is very accurate. This does not make for a pleasant movie. Willis' character is the usual -- haggard, determined, violent. He isn't much more than that. He gets tangled up in the plot (FBI vs. "Government Bad Guys") and calls in favors. The bad guys show a distinct lack of common sense. It's so blithly nonsensical that it's not even worth the energy to describe the inconsistencies. Suffice it to say, the bad guys show a boogeyman-like ability to pop up anywhere when convenient, and a surprising inability to do it when it might impair the protagonist. What bugged me most is that ultimately, this movie could have been about ANYBODY who happened to know Something Secret (TM). It wasn't about the boy's ability to crack code, it was about Bruce Willis' character protecting an innocent. Like in Eraser. Like in Enemy of the State. Like in a dozen other movies. Only in Enemy of the State, the main character's skills actually were USEFUL in the plot. Simon never gets to exercise his code-cracking abilities more than once (to meet one of the soon-to-be-dead informants). Even in portraying an autistic person, Rain Man and Cube still managed to make the character worth liking instead of utterly pathetic. The other problem is that the villain's execuse is -- *GASP! -- being a patriot to protect undercover agents in Iraq. Well, that dates the movie just a little bit. Not their fault, necessarily, but certainly the movie loses its sting. In addition, the whole concept of "sacrificing one for the good of all" is a little more strict these days. Ask an American if an autistic boy's life should be spared to save thousands of agents attempting to stop terrorism and more than half will doom the boy. I can understand why the studio execs bid on the idea. It was a great concept but utterly defanged of any real meaning, failing to utilize its characters, its high-minded ideals, or even its action scenes in a way that makes us care about anybody in the movie. Yes, even an autistic little boy.
Rating:
Summary: Bruce Against the Evil Agents
Review: This adventure film is based on the assumption that a state-of-the-art encrypted message could be read by an autistic nine year old! It is another film that is full of sound and fury. There is Alec Baldwin playing a reactionary Govt. agent who is out to kill this autistic child and his parents. Bruce Willis plays the bleeding-heart liberal out to save the world, one child at a time. Hollywood tells the truth. The film opens with a botched bank robbery in "South Dakota", of all places. Undercover agent Bruce pleads for more time so he can save two teen aged boys. This fails, and they are killed resisting arrest. (Could an agent really get this deeply involved?) [Does this allow latecomers to take seats and not miss anything?] Next comes the main plot. The autistic boy reads a puzzle magazine, and solves it in his head! This causes the murder of his parents, and the boy's narrow escape. The Chicago police are called, and Bruce gets his assignment: cover this case. He finds the hidden boy, takes him to a hospital. Now Bruce figures out that the boy is a target, and the rest of the story is how he tries to keep him alive until the happy ending. The assassination of a code clerk on a busy street reminds me of Hitchcock's "Foreign Correspondent" or similar replicated scenes. The tale of "rogue agents out of control" was disproved by the Watergate hearings. These agents are never "out of control" until they're caught. Andrew Jackson said that government was not a necessary evil, only its abuses were evil. Is this still true?
Rating:
Summary: Very Good - Not Quite Excellent
Review: This movie is a story of an autistic child that is in danger, and the only one who can save him is Bruce Willis's character. It isn't an original story, but is told fairly well. Some parts could be improved upon because they lack believablity, but at the end you don't feel cheated. I personally feel that 4 stars is about right, because this movie isn't of the caliber of "Sixth Sense."
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