Mercury Rising (1998)

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Has anyone seen the film Mercury Rising (1998) which features a 9 year old boy with classic autism?

Was that the one about the kid who could crack the latest encryption technology and the CIA wanted him dead in case he ever fell into the wrong hands?

Yes. Actually, it was the NSA.

God, that movie sucked.

That movie was when I first heard about autism. Before, I ever even knew it existed and never heard of it so I thought all autistic people were like him.

I saw that film in theaters, and maybe once on cable since, but that's it. The film doesn't get shown a lot.

First movie I saw about autism was Rain Man. But the real guy that the movie was based on is... well, is simply amazing. As soon as you ask your question he almost blurts out the answer.

i've seen mercury rising. it's ok, bit cliched though. miko hughes did a good job for being under 10 at the time.
i've done logic puzzles for as long as i can remember.

I liked parts of that movie and I thought it was good they were trying to show what Autism was to mainstream audiences. But I thought the end where Bruce Willis gets the boy to look him in the eye and then they hug was a bit out of place.

But I liked the bit where he had to cover the child between those two thundering trains. That bit really put across the sensory issues I sometimes get in busy traffic.

******SPOILERS******SPOILERS*******SPOILERS

I just saw it for the first time.

As far as the sensory issues they showed touch aversion also.

They showed wandering, a big issue with classically Autistic children

They explained he was not "ret*d" but his problem is he takes too much information in, another word the "Intense World Theory" a dozen years before that theory was published.

The ending did make my skin crawl but the NT's in the film tried to get him to look them in the eye a number of times.

Simon adjusts to radical changes in his life much better than most NT's, which is unrealistic.

The scene on the ledge where he picks up the gun and shoots the bad guy is totally unrealistic but also shows the autistic boy knows good from bad.

From a 2018 perspective, the autism portrayal is on a scale of 1 to 10 is a 5 maybe a 6. But this film was released in 1998, just before HFA/Aspergers became mainstream, before the Neurodiversity/Autism Rights movements, and before we were sick of male autistic savant portrayals. The film was not made to spread autism acceptance, it was a Bruce Willis vehicle, a Hollywood action flick. So for is time and purpose it was a pretty good portrayal.

I thought the movie was dumb, mainly cause the premise just seems really flawed, as why would the government put one of their secret codes they don't want cracked, in a children's crossword puzzle book, which you can buy in stores?

Does that make any sense? Unless I missed something?

I saw it in 2008, after I started looking into if I was aspie and just some months before I was diagnosed. It was the first movie I saw that featured a character on the spectrum

I thought it was okay. The portrayal seemed fine to me, the only thing that really annoyed with that movie was how the kid sounded sort of like a robot when he spoke to someone without making eye contact, while speaking more warmly and seeming to be there more when he did.

I saw it on TV several times over the years. Average film