Mercury Rising
Directed by Harold Becker
- action
- crime
- drama
- thriller
The story
Renegade FBI agent Art Jeffries protects a nine-year-old autistic boy who has cracked the government's new "unbreakable" code.
What it’s like
Hard daylight and bright, flat suburban exteriors give way to the cooler, shadowed interiors of federal offices and safe houses, with the look of a late-nineties studio thriller: glossy colour, crisp compositions, quick cuts and a steady pulse of synth-tinged action score that rises under chase sequences and softens into warmer strings for the quieter scenes. Its vibe is tense and earnest, a propulsive action-drama with a tender undercurrent. The pacing is brisk, with long stretches of pursuit and gunfire broken by intimate moments between a wounded, guarded agent and the small, unshowy child he is protecting. Violence is frequent and fairly strong: gunfights, explosions and a few sudden, bloody deaths, though the gore stays moderate. A child is in peril throughout, which adds dread, but there is no sexual content and the cruelty is mostly of the bureaucratic and criminal kind. It suits a Friday night with friends, a comfort-action rewatch, or a long flight, and it is for viewers who want a sincere, emotionally direct thriller where a hardened man slowly learns to protect someone fragile.
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