Unclear and Present Danger - Mercury Rising

Episode Date: March 26, 2026

On this week’s episode of Unclear and Present Danger, Jamelle and John watch the 1998 action thriller Mercury Rising, directed by Harold Becker and starring Bruce Willis, Alec Baldwin, and Miko Hughes. The film follows FBI agent Art Jeffries, who goes on the run to protect a nine-year-old autistic boy after the child accidentally cracks a classified NSA encryption cipher — drawing the attention of a rogue intelligence official willing to use lethal force to keep the program secret.In their conversation, Jamelle and John discuss the film’s offensive depiction of autism, its vision of “the deep state,” and the various ways it reflects mounting paranoia around government surveillance. You can find Mercury Rising available on Apple TV and Amazon Prime. Episodes come out roughly every two weeks, and so we will see you then with an episode on a 1998 TV movie about the Oklahoma City bombing. And don’t forget to check out our Patreon, where we cover the films of the Cold War and do a weekly politics show. You can find that at patreon.com/unclearpod

It is called Mercury, the most sophisticated national security code ever created. Once we complete its installation, it's going to be very hard for our adversaries to compromise our communications. And it has just been broken by a nine-year-old boy. What did you get this number? He's calling from his own house. Simon, put down the phone, honey. We slipped a message in the back of a puzzle magazine. We basically dared the amateurs to take a crash.

sure that no one would ever call. But somebody did. Some people believe... There must be nothing that connects the boy to this office. Am I clear? That anyone is expendable. But for Special Agent Art Jeffries... What is this?

It's supposed to be a missing kid. It is. These are the parents. This isn't just anyone. You can come on out now. Nobody's gonna hurry. Yes! Well, my name is Art.

I'm your friend... He's autistic. I'm not going to be able to question this boy? Probably not. I'm your friend. See? Art is your friend. Give him up, take him back. Would you give your own kid up?

It's not your kid! All right now he's nobody's kid. This evening this entire situation will be contained. What's going on? We're talking about people who have the ear of the president. This is way over our heads, Art. You're telling me a nine-year-old kid crack the government's super code? Simon?

What does that say? Well, it doesn't matter. He can read it. That's why his life is in danger. Universal pictures and imagine entertainment. Bruce Willis. That kid is your responsibility. Whose responsibility, is he?

Mercury Rising. Hello and welcome to Unclear and Present Danger, the podcast about the political and military thrillers of the 1990s and what they say about that decade. I'm Jamel Bowie. I'm a columnist for the New York Times opinion section. I'm John Gans. am no longer a columnist the nation. I

write the substack newsletter on popular front and I am the author of when the clock broke, conmen, conspiracists and how America cracked up in the early 1990s, available in paperback wherever good books are sold. On this week's episode of the podcast,

we watched the 1998 action thriller Mercury Rising, directed by Harold Becker and starring Bruce Willis as the protagonist, our Jeffrey's Miko Hughes as Simon Lynch, and I'm going to read due to the description of the character, a nine-year-old autistic savant who unwittingly cracks the Mercury Code, Alec Baldwin as the villain, Lieutenant Colonel Nicholas Kudrow, and Chi McBride as Tommy

Jordan Arts fellow FBI agent. There are lots of other somewhat recognizable character actors in this movie. Peter Strom Ayer shows up. But yeah, that's the main cast there. I guess Kim Dickon, Stacey Sebring, who helps art look after Simon. You also notice, what's his name? John Carroll Lynch shows up early in the film as a character and a few other, again, mostly recognizable character actors. Mercury Rising concerns Simon Lynch, a nine-year-old artistic Savant, who unwittingly cracks a secret NSA code. Here is a brief plot synopsis. The film begins with a bank robbery hostage situation in South Dakota where we meet FBI agent R. Jeffries, who is undercover among the criminals.

He tries to reason with the gang leader, who you'll recognize from office space, and protect one of the robbers who is a young man who is, as Willis says later, just a kid. Despite appeals for more negotiation time, the FBI storms, the building, kills the criminals, and art is demoted to death duty after he punches his superior for making the decision. Fast forward years later, the NSA has created an encryption cipher called Mercury. They believe it to be unbreakable. And as a test, they embed this code in a puzzle magazine. We meet nine-year-old Simon, who is, how do I say this,

an offensive caricature of a child with autism, who solves the puzzle through autistic magic. That's what the movie, the movie strongly suggests. His like gears are working. You hear like computer noises in his head. Yeah. It's that great. Art cracks the code and calls the number embedded in the solution,

which reaches a pair of NSA cryptographers. They repeat the breach to their boss, Lieutenant Colonel Nick Kudrow, who says that Simon is a national security threat and needs to be eliminated, him and everyone he knows. We then see a assassin show up to kill Simon and his parents. The parents are killed, but Simon flees. Art is sent to investigate the homicide when he finds Simon in the house and may go on the run. This first takes them to a hospital where Simon was placed for, you know, to be checked up. And they then end up on a train.

They then, I mean, they kind of do like, this movie takes place in Chicago, which they're going through Chicago. And they're being chased by assassins sent by the NSA to kill them. One of the NSA cryptogical, well, the two NSA cryptographers, realizing what is happening, try to put an end. into it by providing information to art. One of those cryptographers is assassinated by the NSA assassin. The other creates, writes two letters exposing Kudros' crimes to provide to the Senate

Oversight Committee. But he is then killed as well. But these letters, the cryptographer made copies. The girlfriend gets the copies, provides him to the FBI. The FBI arranges a meeting with art. Sorry, things get a little convoluted here. We'll just fast forward. FBI has letters.

Art confronts Kudrow at a birthday party and demands that Kudrow admit the Mercury Project is a failure. The FBI attempts to put Simon into the witness protection program, but Kudrow takes control of the operation to kill Simon and get rid of all of this once and for all. This all builds into a big rooftop confrontation where Kudro attempts to kill Simon but is killed by Art. and the kind of, it's killed by art. A very, very diehard moment, very derivative diehard moment where Kudrow is shot and falls off the building. The movie ends. Simon trusts art. He's in, he has foster parents.

Art visits Simon and the film closes with Simon embracing art as friends. I really can't emphasize enough how bad this movie is. It's really bad. It's one of the worst we've watched, perhaps. Well, I don't know. We've watched some real stinkers. This is pretty bad. All right.

But we got to do the whole thing. We got to do the whole thing. Yeah. So quick, a little more information on the film. All right. Harold Becker, born 1928, still living. He's 97 years old. Wow.

He's made some good movies. He directed City Hall, a movie that we both liked. Yeah, we really enjoyed. He's directed a few decent films. He's a producer as well. His next film after this is Domestic Disturbance with John Travolta. This sounds terrible. Although it was more successful than Mercury Rising, but still not all that successful.

He directed Malice, another Baldwin film written by Aaron Sorkin, crime thriller, which was a big success. So that's Harold Becker. the tagline for Mercury Rising was someone knows too much. The movie had a budget of $60 million estimated. It, I think, made, it made, I think about $10 million. It was, sorry, yes, its opening weekend was $10 million. It was third behind Lost in Space.

You might remember that. The film edited. of lost in space. And then Titanic, which was number one, right. It had a domestic gross of $32 or $33 million, just about international gross of $60 million. So, okay, I guess it made back its money,

but was not all that successful. Critics savaged it. Ebert gave it only two stars. Other critics were much harsher. There's praise for Willis. Who does the job well? And the film basically got no, really no recognition or anything. It, it, uh, it's, nor does it deserve it.

Yeah. I mean, it's sort of a forgotten film. I thought this was funny. Back in 2011, there was a Blu-ray edition of this movie that was double packaged with the Jackal, another forgotten Bruce Willis vehicle from this period. Yeah, which was better. Okay. Which was better, yeah.

We're not great, but better. All right. Mercury Rising was released April 3rd, 1998. Let's check out the New York Times for that day. Isn't it weird that recently the movies are almost lining up with like where we are in the year? Yes. It's kind of, I don't know. That's just a coincidence, but I'd notice it.

Four Salvadorans say they killed the U.S. nuns on orders of military. Jesus Christ. Yeah. San Salvador, March 28th, after 17 years of silence, all four. of the former National Guardsman convicted of killing three American nuns and the lay worker in 1980 have said for the first time that they acted after receiving orders from above. The declarations made from prison are an important development and the case because El Salvador in the United States have always officially argued that the killers acted on their own. Human rights groups and relatives of the

victims, however, have always maintained the executions were ordered, improved and directed by the military authorities. The churchwomen, Mara Clark, Gene Donovan, Ida Ford, and Dorothy Castle were abducted, raped, and shot to death on the night of December 2, 1980. The next day, peasants discovered their bodies alongside an isolated road and buried their remains in a common grave. The van they had been driving when stopped at a military check-borne turret up 20 miles away, burned and gutted. The killings came as the United States was beginning a decade-long $7 billion aid effort to prevent left-wing gorillas from coming to power here, and the case quickly became the focus of a bitter policy debate about Central America.

This particular act of barbarism in 1993 State Department report said did more to inflame the debate over El Salvador in the United States and any other single incident. In 1993, United Nations Truth Commission report concluded that Colonel Carlos Eugenio Vides Casanova, the director of the National Guard in 1980, and journal Jose Guillermo Garcia, the minister of defense at the time had organized an official cover-up. All right. Well, this is something I knew about for certain. It's a horrible crime in America's history.

The policy of the United States in South America, especially during the Reagan years, was terrible. We funded all kinds of horrible death squads and things like this. And, you know, this is it. And just came to light. I mean, it was known, but it became clear how much the United States and its client regimes were. responsible for this kind of tortures and and and disappearances we've mentioned it before but the um the oliverstone movie salvador has a dramatization of this uh of this uh atrocity yeah um let me see let me read this is very interesting this is a really interesting case right beneath that

uh ex vciate is convicted in reaction ranges wide a french court's historic finding today that morris Papon is guilty of complicity in Nazi crimes against humanity because he turned over, turned Jews over to the Germans in World War II as both comforted and disconcerted the country. He served as a high-ranking civil servant for 50 years. Jews and some lawyers for the survivors faulted the court for absolving Mr. Pippon, then a functionary of the wartime collaborationist government in Vichy of knowingly furthering Nazi plans for the extermination of the Jews by officially cooperating with the German authorities. defenders of the idea that Vichy was a lesser evil that had spared France and most of its 330,000 Jews,

the worst at the hands of the Germans, denounce Mr. Popon's condemnation as an insult to the memory of the resistance. He also claimed to have served. This is a super interesting case, a very important case in the history of France, not the least because it was a lot of historians testify in this case, including Robert Paxson, the great historian of fascism and Vichy France. about the relationship of the Vichy regime to the Nazi regime. You know, the common sense that we have about the depths of collaboration was something that has only been established conclusively by historians in our lifetime, at least me and Jamel's lifetimes, because there was a sort of myth created that even though he was against them, De Gaulle sort of allowed to happen as a kind of reuniting the country thing that, oh, well, actually, a lot of people in Vichy did things to help the resistance and to prevent the Germans from doing worse things.

Papant is an extraordinarily villainous character in French history because not only did he was a Vichy official, he's responsible for not one, but two massacres of Algerian protest. in Paris in the 1960s during the the the Algerian wars of liberation. So he was a and these are famous incidents where in one case protesters were pushed into the Sen and drowned. So this is a really odious character who was on the wrong side of French history in two different under two different regimes. And he was eventually asked to resign by de Gaulle, but he was not But his conviction only came in the 1990s. But yeah, it's a really fascinating case. And if you're interested in French history, I would recommend looking into it.

Let's see what else we got here. Let's see. Companies oppose disclosure of detail on gifts to charity. Senate approves budget blueprint curbing tax cuts. Virtually all of the president's proposals are rejected mostly party-line vote. After calming recalcitrant conservative as the Senate tonight approved a Republican budget blueprint for the new fiscal year, the whole tax cuts $30 billion over five years and reject nearly all of Clinton's products. His second term was really a difficult one. Oh, Democrats raised pressure on Star to end investigation of Clinton.

Seizing on polls showing wide public condemnation of federal judge dismissal of the parloric-corban Jones sexual misconstitutional. lawsuit, the White House, Democrats, and Congress today turned up the pressure on Kahnstar to to conclude his criminal investigation of President Clinton. While the fresh political offensive orchestrated from the White House, even Democrats who had been reluctant to weigh in join the course against Mr. Starr, I would hope that Mr. Starr would see fit to bring this investigation to close. Well, as we know, that that did not happen. They didn't, they weren't able to do that. It was Mr. Starr's longest session with the press since accused accusations about Mr. Lewins, Clinton's relationship with Monica Lewinsky's surface 10 weeks ago.

In defiant, sometimes rambling, defensive a strategy, Mr. Star said you're very keen and powerful, interesting completing the investigation, but seeking to draw distinctions between Mrs. Jones' civil case and accusations of perjury and the obstruction of justice. If you lie under oath, if you intimidate a witness, if you seek otherwise obstruct the process of justice, it doesn't matter who wins and loses in the civil case. Well, we all know how that ended up. But yeah, we're right in the middle of this. The Marlon Lewinsky stuff is about to explode.

Very quaint. Yeah, very quaint that that was a big deal. Anyway, anything else look interesting to you here? Yeah, not so much. All right. I'll say there's this on the end here, inside, there's this headline. Senate's Mr. Bipartisan. Senator John McCain is at the forefront of issues like Tibet.

and campaign finance legislation reaching across party lines. McCain would lend his name to McCain-Feingold, which is probably the biggest piece of campaign legislation passed in the 20th century. And that was overturned by the Supreme Court and Citizens United in 2010. But McCain, I mean, you know, it's kind of forgotten now, but McCain was this sort of very popular figure, especially among the press. and, you know, ran in the 2000 election for the Republican nomination, lost George W. Bush, but was still broadly popular with the American public throughout his career, despite

mostly being a down-the-line conservative. He just sort of, I think actually unlike a lot of folks these days, who want to sort of claim the Maverick, the Maverick moniker, McCain sort of understood that there are places where you can kind of break with your party, and it doesn't really, you don't suffer all that much. So campaign finance and tobacco are two good ones, like broadly popular with the public, doesn't really offend any core Republican constituencies, makes you look good. And then that buys you the leeway to kind of be a party line guy and everything else.

And somehow, somehow a lot of, like, Democrats and Republicans who are trying to do this thing, miss that. So, like, Federman is very clearly trying to be, like, Mr. Independent. But you don't do that by, for example, you know, voting for the opposition's priorities. You do it by finding areas where. He's so annoying. Yeah. He's beyond.

He's more annoying. Well, in a way, he's really not that different from John McCain. He's a bomb people pro-Israel. You know? I mean, John McCain was classier, maybe, but because, you know, he comes from this aristocratic American family. Anyway, you know, he fought in Vietnam. I mean, there is something to him being, you know, former person of war. Yeah.

You're right. Coming from this kind of aristocratic family. And then a guy like Federman or Kirsten Cinema, kind of just being dipsets. Yeah. Yeah. I know. I mean, you know, it's not good to idealize those families in America. But I will say, the country looked a lot.

I don't know if that's funny. I mean, look at, look at the bushes. I mean, look at their, you know, they were elegant, you know, they, they had those preppy outfits. and the Kennedys, and now we got all these slops. I guess that's democracy for you. I guess that's democracy. There is like a wide open lane for just being like a decently well-dressed national politician.

Yeah, I guess maybe Jack Schlossberg will take it. I don't know. John Ossoff is pretty well dressed. Oh, yeah. He's nice. He dresses nice. Yeah. I ran into him in an airport a couple weeks ago.

Oh, really? Guardia, yeah. Interesting. It was like random. I was getting up security and looked over. And I was like, is that John Ossoff? Did he recognize you? It was that thing where you pretend like you've met before.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, politicians have to master that. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, we both pretended like we had met each other before. Right. You had not. We had not. Yeah.

Interesting, interesting politician there. Yeah, I like him actually. All right. Mercury Rising. John, had you seen this before? I actually think, I don't know if I'm inventing a memory, but I think, I don't know if I'm inventing a memory, but I think. I think I saw this in the theaters with my dad, and I remember him really not liking it.

I don't know what I thought of it. I was a kid, you know? I don't know. I didn't, my standards weren't as high. I remember I was interested in, at this age, I was starting to get interested in kind of computer hacking, cryptography, privacy stuff. And so I guess the topic of cryptography would have interested me. but watching this again, it basically deals nothing with cryptography. Like there's no, it's just like, oh, he's got magic powers to solve it.

Yeah, they don't explain like how he could possibly do that. They're just like, oh, yeah, he's autistic. He's a rain man. He's a rain man guy. Yeah, I mean, the movie's treatment of autism is like, yeah, you know who they are. You know how they are. The rain man guys, you know, they do a rain man. So it was pretty bad.

I mean, like, also, it was just, it's action stuff is not, it's par for the course with a lot of pretty mediocre movies. And yeah, I mean, like, first of all, I mean, it's, it's like, it's like Rain Man without any, I mean, I think Rain Man is a garbage movie too. And I, we've, we've gone deep into my Barry Levinson, like, hate, and that's, that has nothing to do with the movie we're watching. So I won't go to get sidetrack. But I think that this movie is possibly worse. more offensive than Rain Man. Maybe not. Yeah, so it's just like, okay, yeah, you have this, you know, what they used to call an idiot savant, which we don't obviously anymore. And then he's able to solve this code immediately. And then the U.S. government tries to track him down and kill him.

Baldwin is obviously like never that boring to watch. But this is like, you can tell when he's kind of phoning it in. And he's just like, he's just like leaning on his voice and his eyes. And Like, he's just like, I'm very bad in this movie. It's just not one of his great performances. He didn't care, obviously. He is not really doing his best. And who can blame him? I mean, I just don't think anybody would be inspired to do a good job on this movie.

Politically, what can you even say? I mean, it's not politically correct. I mean, for its time, it was probably politically correct. I don't think any of the commentary I read in the movie at the time really commented. on how bad it's depiction of autism or just dealing with issues like that are. I think that maybe for its time people thought it would have been sweet or nice the way it depicted those things and humanizing. Obviously, in retrospect, not so much.

I thought, so I had kind of a political reading of the movie, but it was based on a misconception, which was that I thought that he, at the beginning, the bank robbers, he was, undercover with were like a white supremacist militia? That's, I mean, that's the strong, I feel like that's the strong implication. Right. They're decked out in camo. They're talking about God's will. I mean, it's very, it's very.

So maybe I'm not wrong. Yeah, it's very Ruby Ridge coated. And when the movie started, I was like, because I've never seen this before. Yeah. So when it started and it was like, it was like, it's a very Ruby Ridge, Waco coded thing. I was like, oh, that's kind of interesting. Yeah. Interesting way to, to, how, I wonder how this plays out in the film.

And it amounts to nothing. Right. I guess if you could tease it out and you were like, okay, well, what very, you know, non, what is the word I'm trying to find? This, the tropeism of it, I guess. Like, okay, it has no actual content, but they were using like the signifiers or the, or like the ideas of like, that kind of stuff going on. I mean, it is interesting if you think about it that he presents,

he's like, oh, they like murdered these kids and like it wasn't necessary for the FBI to take this kind of action. And that was definitely like in the air, in the culture, the criticism of the FBI at Ruby Ridge and at Waco. And then you have this so especially on the right, right? So you have the movie potentially having kind of a conservative or libertarian anti-government message where you have this disgruntled, you have this disgruntled FBI agent. And then you have the NSA up to no good. So you can kind of maybe make an argument that a right-wing person watching this movie could be like, yeah, right on. it is more right than left in its anti-government feels. Well, it's interesting because the FBI isn't really the bad guy in this movie.

No. It's not the FBI. The NSA is the bad guy in the movie, although the FBI behaves badly at the beginning when they, like, storm the place. But yeah. But the average also extremely Republican view or right-wing view is like the average FBI special field agent is a good guy. guy, special agent is a good guy. The bureaucracy is a bad guy, right? Right, right. Yeah. So, I mean, yeah, I mean, like, wittingly or not, I think that this movie is one of the more right-coded films we've watched in a while. I guess, I guess there was a, you know, the beginnings of

concern about cryptography, privacy, the NSA in the 1990s. That went, that was both a right, civil libertarian and left libertarian issue. And I think the what the movie is doing and would have been read at its time, it wouldn't have offended anybody particularly. Nobody watching this movie unless they were really sensitive would have been like my politics are bothered by this because there is like a simultaneous being like, yeah, we don't trust the government exactly with these issues. And so I don't think it would have been rec. And I don't think any of the criticism I looked at very briefly recognize any of those themes. But it's interesting that those things. But it's interesting that those things kind of get like absorbed into the culture. And then people are like, they kind of lose

their political balance and become almost commonsensical. It's just like, oh yeah, the government which is, it's not false that the government did not behave well at Ruby Ridge or Waco. Is it a, you know, was it the degree of atrocity that, you know, the propaganda of the far right made it out to be? it's a little more complicated than that. But, you know, it's, it's, yeah, those are my political thoughts about the movie insofar as there is a politics. So I got to say, I was so stuck on the portrayal of the autistic little boy the entire time. Not that, you know, I'm not on the spectrum and my kids aren't or anything. But I was just struck by how, like, is.

insanely insensitive. Like, the kid does not even really exist as a human being in the film. He is mostly a plot contrivance. And to the extent that he interacts with anyone, it is through this like caricature of someone who is, you know, basically debilitatingly disabled. It's it it it's I was read I've been reading some commentary on the film like it of course is recent commentary by people them themselves who are on the autism spectrum and it's uniformly like this is offensive Yeah

And a step backwards right a step backwards right because it Because I mean the way it the way it works the way it plays out in the film is every time someone asked, well, what's with this kid? They're like, oh, he's autistic. And it's like, oh, yeah, yeah. When the cryptographers are like, well, how could this kid figure it out? They're like, well, he's autistic. And it's like, oh, there you go.

You know, they're savants. You know how they are. And it's like the one thing that, so this movie is in a lot of ways a totally generic 90s kind of conspiracy thriller. right? You have like the estranged law enforcement guy. You have the Baroque government conspiracy. You have the assassins. It's very much, you know, paint by numbers here. So the one thing that's supposed to make it a little interesting is the kid, is this character. But the kid, the kid is just a cartoon, a cartoon of children who are on, who are on the spectrum. And I just, I find, I'm so baffled that I guess I'm not surprised that, the producers and whoever and everyone involved in this for like, yeah, this checks out.

We're going to put this in the movie. But it's still, it's still really shocking because it just, it just presents, it presents autism as, as a, as a,

uh, as, a neurodivergency, I'll say that. Yeah. As, as a like debilitating, well,

there are, there are, I mean, there are people who, With have, have, have, you know, very low functioning autism. Right. Who are. And that's what the movie's trying to depict.

But it's also like mixing up, uh, it's mixing up stereotypes, really. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. There's not, there are, there are people with nonverbal. Yeah. Uh, autism. That's absolutely the case.

But the movie doesn't make those distinctions. The movie's just sort of like, yeah, this is autism. Uh, this is what this means. And even, let's say the movie were more nuanced. there's no real attempt to make this kid a character at all. Like he's just, he's just like a collection of tropes. Yep.

Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's hard, but like, yeah, they, they develop no personality for him at all or make any effort to do it. I mean,

it would be hard to do that, but I think they should have just made it like, they should have just made him like not, like they should have made him like higher functioning form of autism, like on the spectrum, but that wasn't well understood at the time. So, like, he could have a personality. Or just, or just, I mean, honestly.

Not to not make the movie. Yeah. But why have this conceit in the first place? In the film, one of the cryptographers is like, yeah, we put this thing into the puzzle magazine because we were just trying to test the geeks we're going to get it. And that would have been a fine movie, right? Like a group of puzzle geeks who crack this code and end up getting on the radar of the NSA. That's, I mean, I think that's much more comedic.

It's not so much like a heart tug at your heart. string's drama. It's something more akin to a buddy comedy. Like, you could imagine a version of this movie that is Midnight Run with Bruce Willis and, like, some nerdy guy on the run from an assassin. Like, that actually sounds like kind of a fun movie. And what this is instead is, is like both paint by numbers and just really misconceived and misguided. Yeah, for sure. I think that, like, it was trying to be, have that add to the drama, the sentimentality or whatever, the movie, and it, and it, it does, it just inspires really badly. I mean, it's, it's, it's, the title is less offensive than the name of the novel.

The name of the novel is based on a simple sign, which is not, which is pretty bad. Oh, that is pretty bad. Yeah. I think it was just like, oh, well, you think that he's really stupid, but he's actually a genius. I wonder if the, did you, did anything you read, do they compare it to the depiction in Rain Man? No, I don't think anyone, I don't, I don't, I didn't read you when comparing it to depiction of rain men, but the depiction of raiment of a similar stripe, right? Yeah, but he has more of a personality. Yeah. I mean, like, yeah.

And it's, well, it's Dustin Hoffman, you know, he's an actor. But, like, it's not a child actor. So I, yeah, it's just, it's just pretty damn bad. Politically, I mean, the only thing I sort of have to observe is we don't get a lot of the NSA as a villain in these things. I think it's in part. Okay, I'll take that back. We don't get a lot of the NSA as a villain. villain in these kinds of movies.

But when we do get the NSA as a villain, it should have completely disentangled from what the NSA does. Like, the NSA is a funny organization that it is quite secretive. And people don't really know what it does. It has a very sinister sounding name, the National Security Agency. But this isn't like being exculpatory for the NSA, which was famously involved during the Bush administration and a surveillance. surveillance program on like all Americans wireless communications like it kind of is a sinister agency in that regard but it's sinister to the extent that like it has lots of access to people's information and and can violate people's privacy but the in a say of this film which is sort of like a domestic CIA um is not really a thing that's more like the FBI.

Yeah which the movie kind of presents as being like full of a okay right as being like basically like cop. Yeah. But it's the FBI that's more likely to be doing the kind of like, to the extent that like anything, the government would be sort of like contracting assassins to kill people. It'd be more an FBI kind of thing or like an illegal CIA operation. Yeah. Yeah. The NSA is kind of very technical. Yeah.

It's like nerds. It's nerds and it's a lot of technology and math. And they show some of that, but then they've got, you know, well, I mean, it's kind of. of like, oh, well, Alec Baldwin's this, you know, this, this Chad who's in charge of all these nerds. And really impatient with their bullshit. Which again, there's a version of this movie that's a comedy. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's much more, I think that that is, um, it fits more a little bit more. Yeah, that fits more. But then you're basically making sneakers. Yeah. Which already was made. And that is cryptography, the solving of cryptographic puzzle as a, as it is just a way better movie in every single way. Like, that is just that movie, which is excellent and, uh, not this, which was, which was really excorable. I'll say the other thing politically is that, and this was

the case, I mean, this is a contemporary, this movie is a contemporary with enemy of the state. And so here you have another movie that's really keyed in, I think, to what's going to become, or what does become a major political issue, which is just, was just the extent to which the government can collect large amounts of information on people and the way that, you know, really frightens people, violates our sense of privacy, all these sorts of things. And in the 90s, because there isn't a particular, you know, there's terrorism, obviously, but there isn't a kind of sense that we're under existential threat from terrorism. It's much more politically dicey for the federal government to sort of make the case for all

this kind of large-scale data collection. A couple years later, then 9-11 really opens the floodgates. for the ability of the feds to like sell the necessity of large-scale data collection to keep you safe. So it's an interesting example of, you know, paranoia and fear about the federal government's ability to collect information before we get to the age of international terrorism. And like terrorism is kind of the primary foreign policy and domestic security concern for, for many Americans. Right, right, right, right. Yeah, I mean, I don't know what else really to say about it. It is.

And also, like, the, the, the, the kind of love interest kind of thing is, like, so weird. Like, he just meets this lady and, like, forces her to help him. And, like, no one would do this. Like, it's just completely unbelievable, especially because there's no, they have no personalities. There's no personality in the, in the little boy. So you can't believe that she's built. some kind of bond with him. Yeah.

You know, like, it's just so, like, wooden and nonsensical. I mean, it's just, you know, I was just like, just imagine somebody, like, whose favorite movie this is. Like, it's just, it's inconceivable that anybody could like this. You know what I mean? Like, it's just like it has, it's got nothing for nobody almost. I don't know. It's, it's just extremely poor. Yeah, I, I, I, I, I kind of put it. I, I kind of block out some of the worst movies we've watched, but this has got to be up there. What do you think?

I put this up there. I mean, if I were, I haven't rated this on letterbox for anything, but this is like a solid half star movie for me. It's, it's, it's just, it's, it's too generic to be interesting. Like, again, the one interesting thing that happens is the opening sequence. that's a little compelling. And then after that, it's just, it's pained by numbers. It has a defensive betrayal. It doesn't, it's not really doing anything. It doesn't even have, you know, I watch over the weekend, my wife and I rewatched Time Cop, the Peter Hyams, John Claude Van Damme movie about what else, a time cop. Yeah, a cop who stops time crimes, which I'll say watching that, I was struck by the lack of due process for Time Crime. They just like immediately execute them, which is a problem.

Yeah. Well, I don't know about time law. I don't either. The movie suggests, I mean, the movie has like a court, a tribunal. Like in the time, the department of like time enforcement of whatever exists in the federal government. So actually there would be like case law about time crime and time law. Does the constitution's protections for due process apply? Is it like, what's it called?

What's that other movie with Tom Cruise? A minority report. Isn't it like minority report? Yeah, yeah, it's like dumber minority report. Okay. But the thing about TimeCop, bad movie, but it has like these great performances by Ron Silver, by, what's the guy's name? He's in all kinds of stuff. He's from Texas.

Look it up. Look him up real quick. Bruce McGill. So, I think the movie's a lot of fun to watch, but it also has these great performances that really kind of make it. It's like, oh, yeah, it's not wasted by time. I can see Ron Silver really chew the scenery here. I was about to say Ron Silver chew the silverware here, but that makes no sense. But Mercury Reising doesn't have that at all. There's actually no, there are good character actors in this movie. They are given nothing to do. Yeah, it's pretty,

it's pretty garbage. It's just garbage. Absolutely garbage. I guess those were our final thoughts on Mercury Rising. Yeah. It's, you know. It's a real piece of shit. It's a real piece of shit. I mean, of course, it's hard work making a movie. Don't want to disparage the craft people.

But the movie doesn't work. And politically, it's, there are some zeitgeisty stuff there. There are some ways in which it is plugged into, you know, emerging political disputes. But for a movie that does involve like a government agency or two government agencies that it's supposed to be about cryptography, there's just, it doesn't, it's just not much there. Enemy of the state by contrast, it's like just a much more politically interesting movie. In addition to being like a better made movie. Better in every way. So it's for in terms of like the remit of this podcast, it's like, is this.

We have a remit? Yeah, we do. Okay. Is it within our remit? Yeah. I mean, kind of. It works. Yeah, we have a remit.

Which is just to try to break down these films in terms of the politics of the decade. Yeah. So in terms of that, I just feel like you're not missing anything. There's not really that much to say it's in all form. It's kind of a generic late 90s action thriller. And it's rightfully forgotten. No one when Bruce Willis retired from acting because he's suffering from basically sort of dementia neurological degeneration it's very sad

No one was like and remember Bruce Willis's performance in Mercury Rising and remember we'll never forget Bruce Willis in Mercury Rising starring also a bunch of other people So it's a very much a forgettable film Rightfully consigned to the ash heap of history Yeah and that's That's, I feel like it's all we got to say. Yeah, that's it for me. I would not recommend watching this film.

Okay. That is our show. Thank you, as always, for listening. You can find us wherever podcasts are found. If you leave a rating and review on, say, Apple Podcasts, it helps people find the show. We appreciate it. You can reach us for feedback at unclear and present feedback. feedback at fastmail.com.

For this week in feedback, we got another recommendation, but we just got someone who sent us an email, Michael sent us an email that said, this is straight out of one of the movies for the pod. And to link to a New York Times story about opening this up, headline, former Green Beret is behind a failed coup, no, former Green Beret behind a failed coup in Venezuela is on the run. The U.S. government said the military veterans, and Jordan G. Goddrao has been missing for months and that an ankle monitor assigned to him

have been found hidden in a piece of furniture. This is very 90s thriller. A former U.S. Green Beret who was arrested in charge after mounting a failed coup against Nicholas Maduro of Venezuela has been missing for months since considered a fugitive, according to court documents filed this week. There's a documentary of that it's a coup attempt called Men of War. this was a 2020 attempt to overthrow. I think you've never heard of this. I've never heard of it either.

I guess there's the pandemic going on and everything. Here's a description from this review. The strained square jaw, the strained square jaw to drow ends up resembling a doomed middle manager who references Starship troopers and Heraclitus. The film's often fredic editing tends to weaken this strong story. Huh. I might check this out.

Directed by Billy Corbin. Snashing Pumpkins guy? No. Corgan. Corgan. Corgan. Yeah, Corgan. Yeah, Corgan.

This is Corbin. I was like, that doesn't make sense. We're just getting everything. It's just turning into a kind of 90-year-old. Slush. Yeah, just a documentarian director of a film called Cocaine Cowboys from 2006. Oh, I feel like I've seen that. Why have I seen that?

I don't know. It can't be that good. But, I mean, it's an interesting topic. Also, a documentary about MMA called Dogfight. No, not interested. Me neither. I hate MMA. I like boxing.

It's old school. I don't like MMA. Boxing seems more civilized. Yeah. McCain didn't like MMA either. No. Yeah, people aren't in a boxing anymore, but it feel, I mean, obviously boxing a brutal sport. But there's something, I don't know, MMA just feels too like, doesn't feel like there's rules. I mean, they're obviously rules.

But you know what I mean? It just feels like. Yeah, yeah. It's just, it's just too brutal. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Thank you for that.

email, Michael, that's sort of cluing us into this insane story. I'm going to watch this documentary. Yeah, I'll check it out. Sounds interesting. 90 minutes, too. So that's perfect for a weeknight movie for me. Episodes with this podcast come out roughly over two weeks. And so we will see you then.

Let me. Actually, we may not see you in exactly two weeks because I will be on spring break vacation with my family. So we'll see you after that. And we will see you then with. pull up the list. Okay, with the TV movie, actually. We haven't done one of the views in a long time.

Is this even available? What's it called? Oklahoma City, a Survivor Story. Oh, wow. Maybe we can fire on YouTube or something. It's on YouTube, yep. Okay, cool. So we're going to do this TV movie from 98,

directed by John Cordy. Oklahoma City, a survivor story, the story of the rescue and recovery of an Oklahoma Bomb, Oklahoma City Bomb Survivor. This sounds interesting to me. I'd be curious to see how this is depicted. It's just three years after the bombing at this point. And then we're going to just to let you know where we're going after that. We're going to have like a trio after this of like peak 90s movies.

So our next film after this TV film is Bullworth, the Warren Beatty film, which I've never seen. have listened to the song Ghetto Superstar by Praz many times. Oh, you got to listen to that. Which is from the soundtrack for work. So that's the extent of which I know this movie. And I really would like to see this. So that's Warren Beatty's film. Then there'll be Godzilla 98,

director by Roland Emmerich with Matthew Broderick, Jean-Verno, Hank Azariq, Kevin Dunn. A lot of people in this. big movie. I saw this in theaters as a kid. And then Armageddon, Michael Bay, the, the, the, the, one of the dumbest of the something is coming towards Earth movies of the 90s, but I have a lot of affection for it. Eventually, this year at some point, we'll get to the siege. Yeah, great movie. Which I'm very excited. Well, not great movie, but interesting movie, let's say. Yeah, very interesting movie. Yeah. I'm prescient movie in a lot of ways.

But that's what's coming up next for the podcast. We're coming. We're coming to the end, we'll soon be at the end of the decade, and soon enough at the end of this genre of film. But we will then continue on with the post-9-11 films. So there'll be doing more of this. Okay. That's it for the show. We'll see you next time for John Gans. I'm Jamal Bowie. And this is unclear and present danger. Thank you for listening.