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Mercury Rising Review by Elias Savada
Imagine Entertainment changed the title from Mercury Falling during production of this dull and predictable action picture. Unfortunately, title changes don't always help and this indifferent star vehicle follows that notion, as it will head south to video in much the same manner as Willis' Fifth Element and The Jackal deep-sixed themselves last year. It's a cross between Witness (replace an Amish youngster with an autistic child) and Willis' despondent, renegade John McClane character (replace a gung-ho New York detective with a veteran hard-edged FBI agent). It doesn't work ... at all. Call it Witless or call it Die Hardly. Even the ending draws directly from the latter in how it ultimately deals with the big bad guy. Angering by the mishandling of a militant hostage situation by his superiors, outcast
G-man Art Jeffries (Willis) spends the rest of the movie flashing back to two dead teens
who died as he was working undercover in a pre-credit sequence reminiscent of the Ruby
Ridge fiasco. It's strictly cat-and-mouse, with Kudrow's lynchmen, including a presumed-dead special forces mercenary, Peter Burrell (L.L Ginter), chasing Jeffries and the boy all over Chicago. As quickly as Jeffries kills off each NSA henchmen, the secret agency manages to cover its nefarious tracks, picking up its dead agents before anyone notices. At the same time it spreads misinformation on Jeffries, making him a wanted man among his cohorts and forcing him to coerce shoe saleswoman Stacey (Kim Dickens, getting more screen presence in a smaller role after a great performance in Jake Kasdan's Zero Effect), with his manly charms and openness, enlisting her support in saving the child. Peter Stormare, who showed us his novel use of a wood-chipper in Fargo, has a brief (less than two minutes!) appearance before being dispatched to the railbed of the Chicago Transit Authority. Chicago-born actor Chi McBride (a four-year regular on The John Larroquette Show) portrays FBI agent Tommy "Bizzi" Jordan, Jeffries' only friend in the world. (Hey Jeffries, get a life!) It's the only character that half-way hops off the screen. He did the same thing last year when he appeared as the garrulous Illinois Gordon in the dreadful Hoodlum opposite Lawrence Fishburne.
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