The Independent Recommends

FIRST THE bad news about Mercury Rising. It concerns an embittered FBI agent assigned to protect a nine-year-old autistic boy from government assassins who are enraged that he has cracked their security code. Now the good news. The film is strictly a No Bonding Zone. Oh sure, the agent (Bruce Willis, left) tries to get through to the kid (Miko Hughes). But, for the most part, the film is a refreshingly contemplative thriller, unevenly paced but with its share of taut moments, courtesy of Harold Becker (Sea of Love, Malice).

On release

In the thoughtful Iranian film A Moment of Innocence, a director attempts to reconstruct a pivotal incident from his early life, when he knifed a policeman. The vanity of the participants intrudes; the boy playing the young director breaks down - he doesn't want to stab anyone. The picture has immense warmth and wit, and is not at all the clinical experiment it appears to be.

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