It’s too bad Harold Becker, whose engaging political drama City Hall tops its genre, decided to undertake an insipid project like Mercury Rising. Becker does what he can with the conspiracy thriller starring Bruce Willis and Alec Baldwin, but ultimately the plot wears too thin and the action becomes too prosaic to boost the film’s appeal.

Rising begins with an attempted bank robbery orchestrated by what seem to be militiamen, whose sub-par thieving skills instigate a shoot-out with the FBI. All of the robbers eventually are shot and killed except for Art Jeffries, played by Willis. But wait, the intrepid action hero is actually an undercover FBI agent, who asks for more time to resolve the situation and save an innocent, brainwashed boy. In the end though, Jeffries is overruled by the ruthless operations director, whom Jeffries vengefully slugs after the shoot-out.

The aftermath:Jeffries is haunted by the death of the boy and is demoted to wire operator. Thus, the stage is set. Supposedly, Jeffries has vowed to protect the lives of innocent boys, which we understand from his continual flashbacks of the shoot-out, and will be forced to undercut his superiors who have betrayed him.

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Enter Simon Lynch (Miko Hughes), an autistic nine-year-old boy with a flare for deciphering puzzles and brain-teasers. We follow Simon as he plods through a day at school, a bus ride home and an encounter with his overly warm and accommodating family. After a cup of hot cocoa, Simon trudges robotically to his room, sits down, opens his book of puzzles and unknowingly decodes a top secret, highly complex, national security code. The nine-year-old savant then calls the number embedded in the code, reaching two geeky National Security Agency cryptographers who placed the code in the puzzle book to test its impenetrability. Stupefied by the call, they contact the merciless and cunning Lt. Col. Nicholas Kudrow (Baldwin) who initially developed the code, titled Mercury, to protect ethnic-American spies working for foreign governments.

But instead of keeping tabs on the boy or silencing him peacefully, Kudrow sends his henchman to whack out Hughes and his family. The hit-man successfully guns down the parents, but miraculously loses the boy. Jeffries is called to the scene somehow and finds Simon holed up in his closet. Despite some inconsistencies in these scenes, Becker paces the action well. Only until Jeffries vanishes with his sluggish companion, fearing for the boy’s safety, do the action sequences become formulaic and unimaginative.

Larry Konner, who co-wrote the screenplay with Mark Rosenthal, fills the rest of his script with chase scenes in which the bad guys do everything in their power to kill the good guys, and of course, Willis (the good guy) finds a way to evade his pursuers. Unfortunately, there just isn’t enough in the way of character development or insightful dialogue to overshadow the cumbersome plot. All of the characters, as in most action thrillers, are one-dimensional and contribute nothing to the film’s overall texture. Willis is his usual undemonstrative, heroic self while Baldwin effectively portrays the Machiavellian NSA colonel, a character reminiscent of his role as the ruthless doctor in Malice. Though his role is rather annoying, Hughes is believable as the autistic boy.

Ultimately, the contrived moral dilemma facing Jeffries is the saving of one innocent life enough to compromise national security? falls flat, leaving you feeling a little insulted. Rising is a mediocre action picture anchored by significant talent in Becker, Willis and Baldwin. Unfortunately, the story doesn’t provide an avenue for this talent and necessitates far too many trips to the popcorn counter.

Directed by Harold Becker

Written by Larry Konner and Mark Rosenthal

Bruce Willis………………………Arthur Art’ Jeffries

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Alec Baldwin………………Lt. Col. Nicholas Kudrow