Autism at the movies

- Bruce Willis and Miko Hughes

While I await new movies which aren't available, I've been watching older ones I missed. This week's movie rental was - Mercury Rising. This 1998 film was directed by Harold Becker (The Onion Field) and starred Bruce Willis, Alec Baldwin, and Miko Hughes. Based on a novel by Ryne Douglas Pearson, Simple Simon, it tells of Art Jeffries (Willis), an undercover FBI agent who protects an autistic nine year old targeted by the NSA after the boy solves a cryptographic government code called "Mercury" (sort of like the solving of the RSA Secret-Key Challenge).

Ebert didn't like the movie much, but the stuff about autism was interesting (if sometimes sad) and I found the difficult relationship created between the boy and the FBI agent touching.

Here is the trailer ....