Mercury Rising

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.