One mildly anal-retentive, straight-edged individual, one mildly zany free spirit of the opposite sex, some comic moments and a tear-jerking heartfelt speech at the end. Bingo. One romantic comedy.

Or in the case of “Mercury Rising,” one amoral villain with unlimited government authority, one defenseless boy who has attracted the villain's disfavor, one individualistic supercop hero to protect him and a simple story almost any audience can follow. Bingo. One government-conspiracy action movie.

Barring the absence of a romantic foil, “Mercury Rising” provides no surprises. This sort of moviemaking may manufacture the dollars, but it doesn't make for a very interesting film.

Director Harold Becker's latest endeavor, “Mercury Rising” begins with Simon Lynch (Miko Hughes), an autistic 9-year-old boy who likes puzzles.

One day Simon produces a 1-800 phone number from a page of seemingly unrelated symbols in a puzzle book. Upon calling the number, Simon finds himself in contact with a high-tech government office that is amazed to hear from him.

As it turns out, the government, under the guidance of Lt. Col. Nicholas Kudrow (Alec Baldwin), recently perfected “Mercury,” the most complicated code the world has ever seen, one that stood up to the combined efforts of two Cray supercomputers. For all intents and purposes, the government considers Mercury unbreakable.

The only test left was the human intuition factor. So the requisite computer geeks working on Mercury placed a page of the code in the back of a puzzle book, never expecting anyone to call the encoded number.

Before anyone can say “government conspiracy” the government is trying to put a lid on Simon, killing his parents and chasing him all over Chicago.

Of course, Simon is autistic and therefore completely unprepared for the intricacies of eluding government assassins on the streets of the city.

Enter FBI agent Art Jeffries (Bruce Willis), a highly skilled renegade undercover officer consistently at odds with his superiors. Like I said, no surprises here.

On a routine investigation into the deaths of Simon's parents, Jeffries is the only one to question the murder-suicide hypothesis and soon finds himself Simon's only hope. Between Kudrow's efforts to kill Simon and Simon's knack for endangering himself, Jeffries has his hands full.

“Mercury Rising” is very kind to its audiences. It does all our thinking for us--what little is required.

It begins with the rapid, spacey beeping sound we're provided every time Simon deciphers some code--without it we might not realize Simon is deciphering anything.

And the moment “Mercury Rising” begins to develop a moral battle (simple though it may be), it promptly reverts to formula, substituting action for dialogue.

Baldwin's bad guy almost raises the same point Jack Nicholson addressed in "A Few Good Men"-- sometimes an individual must be sacrificed for national security and the greater good.

As Kudrow explains to Jeffries, it may seem difficult to justify Simon's death, but one has to look at the big picture. It isn't the time for individual achievement--America must work as one big team.

Though the perfect moment for a sharp, smart, honest moral rejoinder, Willis, perhaps anticipating America's collective yawn, eliminates the possibility of further moralizing by delivering a sharp kick to Baldwin's chest.

Audiences aren't interested in ethical questions--let's have some more violence.

Formulaic to the core, the cast of “Mercury Rising” is competent but for the most part unremarkable.

Willis is his usual speak-softly-and-carry-a-big-stick hero, the same character he's developed in movies like “Die Hard” and “The Fifth Element.” Less playful than “Die Hard”'s John McClane, Willis's Jeffries projects a paternal, ethical simplicity that is nice and solid--but also boring.

Baldwin plays Kudrow as a slick, sinister and ultimately one-dimensional lowlife. He oozes nicely in every scene, and his mere appearance is enough to cast a malevolent shadow on everything around him, but he gets bogged down in his character's predictably despicable nature.

Hughes, as Simon, does an impressively convincing job playing an autistic 9-year-old, but as an introverted idiot savant, there isn't much dialogue potential. In the end Simon is little more than a chess piece.

From the script to the characters to the can-we-wring-more-tension-from-this-moment final confrontation, “Mercury Rising” takes no risks whatsoever.

For what it tries to be, “Mercury Rising” is competent--it just isn't trying to be very much.