For me, Bruce Willis is one of the few see-it-cause-he’s-in-it actors around.

Him and Harrison Ford.

I’ll go see any movie just because either of those two guys is the star. I keep hoping the two will co-star in an upcoming project, like “Indiana Jones Dies Hard” or something.

In recent years, Willis has selected some eclectic projects and actually proven he can act. But “Mercury Rising” puts him back in the action genre as FBI agent Art Jeffries.

I must say that Willis does a fine job with his character. In fact, most of the performances are good. The acting is better than the lame plot and contrived situations.

Things start out with a big action movie clich‚, the 10 to 15 minute opening action segment. In this case, there’s a bank robbery happening, agent Jeffries is working undercover with the thieves, blah blah blah.

It doesn’t matter, because the scene exists for one reason — so the audience can watch two teen-aged boys get gunned down. And thanks to moody black and white flashbacks later in the movie, we get to watch it again and again.

The “mercury” part of the title refers to a government super code, a method of encryption impossible to decipher unless you have the key.

So, what do the code writers do? They publish the code in a puzzle magazine to test the “geek factor,” whether anyone can crack the code and call the number.

Why would they do anything so stupid? Because if they didn’t, “Mercury Rising” wouldn’t exist. Not that that would be a bad thing.

A young boy sees the puzzle and solves the code. The interesting (read “interesting” as contrived) part is this boy, Simon, is autistic. I don’t now anything about autism, and after seeing this movie, I still don’t know much.

Simon is played well by Miko Hughes. To me, Hughes will always be the evil child who comes back from the dead in “Pet Cemetery.” He really creeped me out in that. “First I played with mommy, then I played with daddy, now I’m gonna play with you.”

Simon looks at the encrypted Mercury code, then his head makes some computer-esque beeping noises and he reads the secret message. Here’s a thought: maybe if a 10-year-old autistic boy is able to figure out your super code, it wasn’t such a great code to begin with.

Alec Baldwin is Kudrow, some big wig in the NSA, and doesn’t see it that way. When he finds out about Simon, he orders the boy and his family killed. You have to have a problem with a movie when the entire plot is the hunting down and killing of a child.

Of course, the boy ends up under the protection of Jeffries, and the rest of the movie is basically a series of uninvolving action sequences where Simon is put in jeopardy and Jeffries saves him.

One reasons this movie is so uninvolving is the relationship between the boy and Willis’ character. Because of Simon’s autism, he is distant and in another reality. He can barely communicate. This detachment not only separates him from the other characters in “Mercury Rising,” but from the audience as well.

Jeffries attempts to save Simon because he couldn’t save the young boys in the opening bank robbery. Oh, now I know why that part was there.

Things aren’t so bad until the ridiculous climactic shoot-out, where the paper thin plot just completely falls apart. Why do these scenes always have to take place on top of tall buildings? Jeffries and Kudrow have the obligatory fight. The outcome is exactly as expected.

I’ll chalk up “Mercury Rising” as one of Willis’ few disappointments. He’s still one of my favorites. I’ll just have to wait until “Armageddon” hits theaters in a few months. In the meantime, maybe I’ll watch “Hudson Hawk” again.

2 1/2 stars out of five

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Mike Milik is a senior in advertising from West Des Moines.