Mercury Rising

0:00It 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? I... so... no... no... 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 be a guru. I'm not 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 a special Agent Art Jeffries... What is this? It's supposed to be a missing kid. It is. He's the parents. This isn't just anyone. Hey, come on out now. Nobody's going to hurt you. Yeah! Well, my name is Art. I'm your friend. I'm a little stranger.

1:02He'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, there's nobody's kid. By 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 cracked the government's supercode? Simon? What does that say? Well, it doesn't matter. You can read it. That's why it's life is endangered. Right now! No! From Universal Pictures, from Universal Pictures, and Imagine Entertainment, Bruce Willis, a kid that's your responsibility. Whose responsibility is he? Mercury Rising.

2:17Hello, 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 Jimelle Bowie. I'm a calmness for the New York Times' opinion section. I'm John Gans. I am no longer a calmness for nation. I write the sub-stack newsletter on popular front and I am the author of When the Clock Broke, Conman, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the early 1990s, available on 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 of our Jefferies, Miko Hughes as Simon Lynch, and I'm going to read the description of the character, a nine-year-old autistic savant to unwittingly cracks the Mercury Code. Alex Baldwin as the villain, Lieutenant Colonel Nicholas Kudrow, and Chiming Bride as Tommy Jordan, arts fellow FBA agent.

3:18There are lots of other, somewhat recognizable character actors in this movie, Peter Stromer, shows up. But, yeah, that's the main cast there. I guess Kim Dickens, Stacy 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 autistic savant, who unwittingly cracks a secret NSA code. Here is a brief plot synopsis. The film begins with a bank robbery-hosted situation in the South Dakota, where we meet FBA agent, our Jefferies, who's 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.

4:18Despite appeals for more negotiation time, the FBI storms the building kills, the criminals, and art is demoted to death duty as to after 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 I say this, an offensive caricature of a child with autism, who solves the puzzle through autistic magic, this was the movie, the movie strongly suggests, his like gears are working. You hear like computer noises in his head. Yeah. It's, it's not great. Art cracks the code and calls the number embedded in the solution, which reaches a pair of NSA cryptographers.

5:18They 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 they go on the run. This first takes them to a hospital or Simon was placed for, you know, to be checked up. They then end up on a train. They then, I mean, they kind of feel like they're, 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 cryptographers, realizing what is happening, try to put an end to it by providing information to art.

6:18One of those cryptographers is assassinated by the NSA assassin. The other creates, writes two letters exposing Kudrow's 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 them to the FBI. The FBI arranges a meeting with art. Sorry. Things say 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. Kudrow attempts to kill Simon, but is killed by art. It's killed by art.

7:18A very very diehard moment, very derivative diehard moment, where Kudrow is shot and falls off the building. The movie ends. Simon trusts art. 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. You 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. Well, wow. He's made some good movies. He directed City Hall. Movie that we were like. Yeah, we were really enjoyed. He's directed a few, a few decent films. He's a producer as well. His next film after this is domestic,

8:19the 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 from Mercury Rising was someone knows too much. The movie had a budget of $60 million estimated. I think made. It made, I think about $10 million. Sorry. Yes, it's opening weekend. It was $10 million. It was third behind Lost in Space. You might remember that. The film adaptation of Lost in Space. And then Titanic, which was number one,

9:20it had a domestic gross of $33 million, just about international gross of $60 million. 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 for 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, it, it, it's just a dessert of it. Yeah, I mean, it's sort of a forgotten film. I thought this was funny. Back in 2011, there's a Blu-ray edition of this movie that was double packaged with the jackal, another forgotten Bruce Willis vehicle from this period. Which was better. Okay. Which was better, yeah. We're not great. But better. All right. Mercury Rising was released

10:20April 3rd, 1998, so 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 if that's just coincidence, but I've noticed it. For Salvadorans, say they killed US nuns on orders of military. Jesus Christ. Yeah. San Salvador, March 28th, after 17 years of silence, all four of the former National Guardsmen convicted of killing three American nuns and the layworker in 1980 have said for the first time that they acted after receiving orders from above. The declarations made from prison are because are an important development in the case because El Salvador in the United States have always officially argued that the killer is 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, Jean Donovan, Ida Ford, and Dorothy Castle, were abducted, raped,

11:20and shocked to death on the 9th of December 2nd, 1980. The next day, peasants discovered their bodies alongside an isolated road and buried their remains in a common grave. The family had been driving when stopped at a military checkpoint and turned up 20 miles away, burned and gutted. The killings came as the United States was beginning a decade-long $7 billion, $8 effort to prevent left-wing guerrillas 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 Reports said, did more to inflame the debate over El Salvador in the United States than any other single incident. In 1993, a United Nations Truth Commission report concluded that Colonel Carlos Eugeneo Vidius Casanova, the Director of the National Guard in 1980, and General 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,

12:20the policy of the United States to insult the American South Central America up, especially during the Reagan years, was terrible. We funded all kinds of horrible death squads and things like this, and this is it. And this 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 disappearances. We've missed it before. But the Oliver Stone, the Salvador, has a dramatization of this atrocity. Yeah. Let me see. Let me read this. This is very interesting. It's a really interesting case, right beneath it. XVGA is convicted in reaction ranges wide. A French court's historic finding today that Maurice Peppan is guilty of complicity and Nazi crimes against humanity because he turned over, during Jews over to the Germans in World War II, has both comforted and disconcerted the country as a high-ranking civil servant for 50 years.

13:22Jews and some lawyers for the survivors faulted the court for absolving Mr. Peppan in the military 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 to announce Mr. Peppan's condemnation as an insult to the memory of the resistance he also claimed to have served. This is a super interesting case, in the history of France, not the least because it was a lot of historians testify in this case, including Robert Paxton, the great historian of fascism and Vichy France about the relationship of the Vichy regime to the Nazi regime. You know, the common sense about that we have about the depths of collaboration was something that has only been established conclusively by historians in our lifetime,

14:24at least me in Jamal's lifetimes, because there was a sort of myth created that even though he was against them, De Gaul 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. Papal 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 protesters in Paris in the 1960s during the Algerian Wars of Liberation. So he was a, and these are famous incidents where, in one case, protesters were pushed into the sand and drowned. So this is a really odious character who was on the wrong side of French history

15:25in two different, under two different regimes. And he was eventually asked to resign by De Gaul, 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'd 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 carving tax cuts. Virtually all of the presents for those that are rejected mostly party line vote. After calming, we're concerned as a Senate tonight approved for Republican budget blueprint that tax cuts 30 billion over five years and reject nearly all of Clinton's products report. His second term was really a difficult one. Oh, Democrats raised pressure on star to end investigation of Clinton.

16:26Seizing on polls showing why public condemnation of federal judge dismissal of the parlor, Corbin Jones, sexual misconduct lawsuit, the White House, Democrats, and Congress today turned up the pressure on kind of star 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 during the course against Mr. Star, I would hope that Mr. Star would see fit to bring this investigation to close. Well, as we know that it did not happen. They didn't, they weren't able to do that. It was Mr. Star's longest session with the press since accused accusations about Mr. Lewin's Clinton's relationship with Monica Lewinsky surface 10 weeks ago. And defiant sometimes rambling, defensive strategy, Mr. Star said you're very keen and powerful, interesting completely investigation, but seeking to draw distinctions between Mrs. Jones's 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 to obstruct the process of justice, it doesn't matter who wins and loses in the civil case.

17:28Well, we all know how that ended up. But yeah, we're right in the middle of this. The Martin 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, that's so much. All right. I'll say if there's this, and you're inside, there's this headline, Senate's Mr. Bipartisan, Senator John McCain's at the forefront of issues like tobacco and campaign financial legislation reaching across party lines. McCain would lend his name to McCain fine gold, which is probably the biggest piece of campaign legislation passed in the 20th century. And that was overturned by the Supreme Court in 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.

18:30And you'll 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, you want to sort of claim the Maverick, the Maverick moniker, McCain should have 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 in tobacco or two good ones, like broadly popular with the public, doesn't really offend any core Republican constituencies, makes you look good. And then you can, even 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 independent, but you don't do that by for example, you know,

19:30voting 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. It's real. You know, I mean, he's, John McCain was classier maybe, but because, you know, he comes from this aristocratic American family. Anyway, you know, he found me a knob. I mean, there is something to him being, you know, a former person or a war. Yeah. You're right. Coming from this kind of a aristocratic family. And then I got like Federman or Kiersten Sinema, kind of just being dipshits. 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 fun. 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, and the Kennedys. And now we got this, all these slops.

20:30I guess that's democracy for you. I guess that's the democracy. There is, there is, there is like a wide open lane for just big, 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 dress is nice. Yeah. I ran into him, I ran into him in an airport a couple of weeks ago. Oh, really? Like Guardia, yeah. Interesting. I was like, is that, 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 absent master. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you know, we both pretended like we had met each other before. Right. We had not. We had not. Yeah. Interesting, interesting politician there. Yeah, I like him actually. All right. Mercury rising. John, how do you see this before? I actually think, I don't know if I'm inventing a memory, but I think I saw this in the theaters with my dad. And I remember him really

21:30not like, I don't know what I thought of it. I was a kid, you know? I don't know. I didn't. My standards were in his high. I remember I was interested in at this age, I was starting to get interesting kind of computer hacking, cryptography, privacy, stuff. And so I guess the topic of cryptography would have interest 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 how he could possibly do that. They're just like, oh, yeah, he's autistic. He's a rainman. He's a rainman guy. And then it's just, I mean, the movie's treatment of autism is like, yeah, you know who they are. You know how they are? You know how they are. You know the rainman guys. You know, they do a rainman. 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

22:30movies. And yeah, I mean, like, first of all, I mean, it's like a, it's like rainman without any, I mean, I think rainman is a garbage movie too. And I, we've gone deep into my berry levels. Hey, and that has nothing to do with the movie we're watching. So I won't go, it's good side track. But I think that this movie is possibly worse and more offensive than rainman. 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 US government tries to track them down and kill them. 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 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.

23:30He is not really doing his best. And who can blame him? I mean, I just don't think anybody would be an 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 right on the movie. The time really commented on how bad its 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 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.

24:30That's, I mean, that's the strong, I feel like that's the strong implication. They're decked out in camo. They're talking about God's will. I mean, it's very, yeah. Okay. So maybe I'm not wrong. Yeah. Okay. When the movie started, I was like, could I have never seen this before? Yeah. So when it started and it was like, it's very Ruby Ridge, Waco, Codive thing. I was like, oh, that's kind of interesting. Yeah. It's an interesting way 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's the, what is the word I'm trying to find? This is 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,

25:30they like murder 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, you know, this is 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. Yeah. It is more right than left in its anti-government fields. Well, it's interesting, because the FBI isn't really the bad guy in this

26:31movie. No. It's not the FBI. The NSA is the bad guy in the movie. Although the FBI behaves badly to being when they like storm the place. But yeah. But the, the average FBI special field agent is a good guy. Special agent is a good guy. The bureaucracy is a bad guy. 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 there was a, you know, the beginnings of concern about what we're going to do with this movie. I think that this movie is one of the more right-coded films we've watched in a while. There's a lot of concern about cryptography, privacy, the NSA, and the 1990s. That went, that was both a right-civil libertarian and left-civilitarian issue. And I think that 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

27:31like, 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. So I don't think it would have been wrecked and I don't think any of the criticism I looked at very briefly recognized any of those themes. 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 common-sensical. It's just like, oh yeah, the government did that. 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, there's some of my political thoughts about the movie in so far as there is a politics. So I gotta say, I was

28:31so stuck on the portrayal of the autistic little boy, the entire time. Not that I, you know, I'm not on the spectrum and my kids are not on anything. But, yeah. I was just struck by how, like, 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, I was reading, I've been reading some commentary on the film, like, of course, it's recent commentary by people themselves who are on the autism spectrum. And it's uniformly, like,

29:31this is offensive. Yeah. And a step backwards. Right. A step backwards. Because, I mean, the way the way the way the way the way it plays out in the film is every time someone asks, well, what's with this kid? They're like, oh, he's autistic. And it's like, oh, yeah, 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, 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

30:32who are on, um, who are on the spectrum. And I just, I find I'm so baffled that I guess I'm not surprised that the, um, producers and who I've never been involved in this project. 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 the, it presents autism as, um, as a, uh, as, presents neurodivergency. I'll say that. Yeah. As, as they like debilitating, well, there are, there are, I mean, there are people who with have, have, have, you know, very low functioning autism. Right. And that's what the movie is trying to depict. But it's also like mixing up, uh, it's mixing up stereotypes really. Right. Yeah. Yeah. There's not, there's not, there are, there are people with nonverbal autism. That's absolutely the case.

31:32But 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, 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 it wasn't well understood at the time. So like, he could have a personality. Or just, or just, I mean, honestly, not like the movie. Yes. But why have this conceived in the first place? And 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 if geeks were going to get it. And that would have been a fine movie, right? Like a group of puzzle geeks who cracked this code and end up

32:33getting on the radar of the NSA. That's, I mean, I think that's much more comedic. I mean, it's not so much like a heart, you tug at your heart strings drama. It's something more akin to a buddy comedy. Like you could imagine a version of this movie that is a 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 or the sentimentality or whatever the movie. And it, and it, it does, it just misfires really badly. I mean, 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 assignment, which is not, which is pretty bad. Oh, that is pretty bad. Yeah. Uh, I think it was just like, oh well, you think that he's really

33:33stupid, but he's actually a genius. I wonder if the, did you, and anything you read, do they compare it to the depiction of rainman? Uh, no, I don't think anyone, I don't, I didn't read anyone comparing the depiction of rainman, but the depiction of rainman's of a similar strike, right? That like, yeah, but he has more of a personality. Yeah. I mean, like, yeah. And it's, well, it's doesn't harm. It's an actor. But like, it's not a child actor. So I, yeah, it's, it's just, it's just pretty bad. Uh, politically, I mean, the only thing I, 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 is a villain in these kind of movies. Um, but when we do get the NSA as a villain, it should have completely disentangled with what the NSA does. Like the NSA is a funny organization that it is quite secretive. Yeah. And people don't really know what it does. It has a very sinister sounding name, the national security agency. Um, but in this isn't like a,

34:35this isn't like ex, being ex-copy turf for the NSA, which was famously involved in the Bush administration in a surveillance program on like all American 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 NSA of this film, which is sort of like a domestic CIA. Um, it's not really a thing. That's more like the FBI. Uh, yeah. Which the movie current presents as being like full of AOK rise as being like basically like cops. Right. Um, but it's the FBI that's more likely to be doing the kind of like two weeks and two weeks and that like anything the government would be sort of a contracting assassins to kill people. It'd be more an FBI kind of thing or like an illegal CIA operation. Yeah. Um, 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.

35:35And they show some of that. But then they've got, you know, uh, well, I mean, it's kind of like, oh, well, Alec Baldwin's this, you know, this, this Chad who's in charge of all these nerds. I'm really impatient with their bullshit. There's a version of this movie that's a comedy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's much more, I think that that is, um, fits more. Yeah. It's a little bit more, but then you're basically making sneakers, which already was made. And that is a cryptography that's 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 is really excurable. I'll say the other thing politically is that in this was the case, I mean, this is a contemporary, this movie is contemporary with the enemy of the state. And so here you have another movie that's really keyed in, I think, to what's going to become, well, what does become a major political issue,

36:35which was just just the extent to which the government can collect like large amounts of information on people. Um, and the, the way that, you know, really frightens people, violators, sense of privacy, all these sorts of things. And in the 90s, because there isn't a particular, you know, there's, 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, sort of make the case for all this kind of large-scale data collection. A couple of 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 to click 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, um, for many Americans.

37:36Right, right, right, right. Yeah, I mean, I don't know what else really to say about it, it is, and also, like, the act, 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, uh, 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, I just imagine somebody, like, whose favorite movie this is. Like, I was just, like, like, it's just, it's, it's inconceivable that anybody could like this. You know what I mean? Like, it's just, it's just like, it has,

38:36it's got nothing for nobody almost. I don't know. It's, it's just extremely poor. Um, yeah, I, I, I kind of put it, 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 or anything, but this is like a solid half-star movie for me. It's, um, it's just, it's too generic to be interesting. Like, again, the one interesting thing that happens is the opening sequence. Right. That's a little compelling. And then after that, it's just, it's paint by numbers, it has to defend to portrayal. It doesn't, it's not only doing anything, it doesn't even have, you know, I watch over the weekend, my wife and I rewatched TimeCop, the Peter Hyam's John Claude Van Dam movie about what else, a TimeCop? Yeah, TimeCop. Uh, uh, a cop who stops time crimes. Uh, which I'll say watching that, uh,

39:36I was struck by the lack of due process for TimeCriminals. They just like immediately execute them, um, which is a problem. Yeah. Well, I don't know about Time law. Uh, 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 or whatever, uh, exist, uh, in the federal government. So they actually, there would be like case law about TimeCrim and Time law. And it does the constitutions, protections for due process apply. Well, isn't this like, what's your call? What's that other movie with Tom Cruise? Uh, minority report. Is it like, minority report? Yeah, yeah. It's like, Dumber minority report. Okay. Um, but the thing about TimeCop, bad movie, but it has like, these great performances by Ron Silver, by, um, what's the guy's name? Uh, he's in all kinds of stuff you some taxes. Uh, Bruce McGill. So, you know, I think the movie is a lot

40:36of fun to watch, but it also has these great performances that really kind of make it's like, oh, yeah, I'm not, it's not wasted by the time. I can see Ron Silver really chewed the soap scenery here. Um, I was about to say, Ron Silver chewed the, uh, silverware here, but that makes no sense. Um, uh, but, uh, Mercury Rising doesn't have that at all. There's actually no group. There are good characters in this movie. They are given nothing to do. Yeah. It's pretty, it's pretty garbage. It's just garbage. Absolute garbage. Uh, 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. Uh, I mean, of course, it's hard work making a movie don't want to disparage the craft's people. Uh, 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 in to, you know, emerging political disputes.

41:37Um, but for a movie that does involve like a government agency that, or two government agencies that it's supposed to be about the cryptography, which is, it doesn't, it's just not much there. Um, enemy of the state by contrast. It's just so much more politically interesting movie. Um, in addition to being like a better made, better in every way. Um, so it's for, in terms of like the remit of this podcast, it's like, is this a remit? Yeah, we do. Okay. Um, is it, is it in within our remit? Yeah. I mean, kind of, it works. I can, yeah, we have a remit, um, which is just to sort of try to like break down these films in terms of the politics with the decade. Yeah. So in terms of that, I just feel like you're not missing anything. Um, 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.

42:37Um, no one, when Bruce Willis retired from acting, because he's suffering from basically sort of dementia, neurological generation, it's very sad. No one was like, and remember Bruce Willis is performance in Mercury rising. And remember, we'll never forget the work you're rising, starring also a bunch of other people. Uh, so it's a very much of a forgettable film, um, rightfully consigned to the ash heap of history. Yep. Uh, and that's, that's, I feel like it's all we got to say. Yep. Uh, 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 forever podcast are found. Uh, if you leave a rating and review on say Apple podcast, it helps people find the show. We appreciate it. Uh, you can reach us for feedback at unclear and present feedback at fastmail.com.

43:37Um, for this week in feedback, we got another recommendation when we just got someone who sent us an email, Michael sent this email that said, this is straight out of one of the movies for the pod. And to link to your time story about opening this up, uh, headline, former green beret is behind a failed coup. No, former green beret behind a failed coup in Venezuela's on the run. The U.S. government said the military veteran, Jordan G. Goodrow has been missing for months and that an ankle monitor assigned to him had been found hidden in the piece of furniture. This is very, uh, 90s. Crazy. Um, if former US green beret who was arrested in charge after mounting a failed coup against Nicholas Maduro of Venezuela, who's been missing for months since considered a fugitive, according to court documents filed this week. There's a documentary about its coup attempt called Men of War. Um, this was a 2020 attempt

44:37to overthrow. I've never heard of it. I've never heard of it either. I guess the weather is the pandemic over your order and everything. Um, the, here's a description from this review, the strain, square draw, the strain, square draw, Goodrow ends up resembling a doomed middle manager, who referenced his starship troopers, um, and Herocletus. The film's often fredic editing tends to weaken this strong story. Uh, huh. I might check this out, directed by Billy Corbin. Is this actually pumpkin? Pumpkin's guy? No. No. Corigan, Corigan, Corin. Corban. Corbys. Corban. It makes sense. We're just going everything. It's just turning into a kind of 90s slush. Yeah. Uh, yeah.

45:37Just a documentary in, um, director of a film called Cocaine Calboys 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 dog fight. No, not interested. Me neither. I hate MMA. I like boxing. It's old school. I don't like MMA. Boxing seems to be specialized. Yeah, McCain. McCain didn't like MMA either. No. Yeah, people are in a boxing anymore, but it feels, I mean, obviously boxing in 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, uh, clearing us into this insane story.

46:39I'm going to watch this documentary. Yeah. I'll check it out too. It sounds interesting. 90 minutes, too. So that's perfect. Perfect for a weeknight movie for me, uh, episode to this podcast come out roughly over two weeks. And so we will see you then. Let me actually, we will, 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, uh, and we will see you then with pull up the list, uh, okay. With the, uh, the TV movie, um, actually, we haven't done one of these in a long time. Um, is this even available? What do you call it? Oklahoma City. It's survivor story. Oh, wow. Maybe we can find out on YouTube or it's, it's on YouTube. Yeah. Okay. Cool. So we're going to do this TV movie from 98 direct by John Cordy, Oklahoma City, it's survivor story. The story of the rescue recovery of an Oklahoma bomb, Oklahoma City bomb survivor.

47:41Uh, 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. Um, and then we're going to just let you know where we're going after that. We're going to have like a trio after this of, of like peak 90s movies. So, uh, our next film after this TV film is Bullworth, uh, the Warren Baby Film, uh, which I've never seen. I have this, I have listened to the song Getto Superstar by prize many times, you gotta listen to that, which is from the soundtrack. Yeah. So, uh, uh, that's the extent of which I know this movie, uh, and I really would like to see this. So, uh, that's Warren Baby's film, uh, then there'll be Godzilla 98 with direct by Roland Emmerich with Matthew Broderick, John Verno, Hank Azaria, Kevin Dunn, a lot of people on this big movie. I saw this in theaters as a kid. And then Armageddon, Michael Bay, um, the, the, the, what are the dumbest of the, something

48:44is 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. So, 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. So that's what's coming up next, uh, for the podcast. We're coming to the end. We're, we'll soon be at the end of the decade. And, uh, soon enough, at the end of this genre of film, uh, but we will then continue on with the post on 11 films. So they'll be, they'll be more of this. Okay. That's it for the show. We'll see you next time for John Gantz. I'm Jim Elbowey. And this is unclear and present danger. Thank you for listening.