- Director: Timur Bekmambetov
I didn’t go into Mercy expecting much, the trailers had been terrible, frankly annoying even seeing them for months in front of other films. So I went in expecting the worst, but hoping to be surprised, Iwanted to like Mercy. Truly, I did. The premise—a detective fighting for his life against an AI judge with a 90-minute execution timer—sounded like the kind of high-concept trash that usually makes for a fun Saturday night. But after sitting through Timur Bekmambetov’s latest techno-thriller, I walked out feeling less like I’d watched a movie and more like I’d been trapped in a buffering Zoom call with Chris Pratt for an hour and a half.
The Setup: Justice by Algorithm
The film drops us into a near-future Los Angeles of 2029, where the justice system has been “streamlined” by Mercy, an AI program designed to eliminate human error. Chris Pratt plays Chris Raven, a detective who once championed this very system, only to wake up strapped to a chair, accused of murdering his wife, Nicole (Annabelle Wallis).
His judge? An AI avatar named Maddox, played with icy, uncanny precision by Rebecca Ferguson. The hook is undeniable: Raven has exactly 90 minutes to sift through digital evidence—surveillance footage, texts, biometric data—and lower his “guilt probability” from 97.5% to below 92%. If he fails? A lethal sonic pulse executes him on the spot.
The Good: A Slick Interface
I have to give credit where it’s due: the visual language is distinct. Bekmambetov, who pioneered the “screenlife” genre with films like Profile and Searching, attempts a hybrid approach here. We aren’t stuck entirely inside a computer screen, but the world is overlaid with augmented reality interfaces that feel frighteningly plausible. When the clock is ticking and Raven is frantically scrubbing through Ring camera footage to find an alibi, the tension is palpable.
There is also a perverse fascination in watching Ferguson’s Maddox. She is easily the most compelling part of the film, oscillating between a cold database and a strangely empathetic confessor.
The Bad: A System Failure
Unfortunately, the human element is where Mercy crashes hard. Chris Pratt gives a performance that feels as synthetic as the judge he’s arguing with. He spends the entire runtime furrowing his brow and shouting at screens, but I never once bought his desperation. It’s a “subtext-free performance” that obliterates any noir atmosphere the film tries to build.
Even worse is the script’s handling of its own themes. For a movie about the dangers of AI justice, Mercy bizarrely seems to act as a PR campaign for it. Instead of critiquing a system that executes people based on probability, the film doubles down on the idea that “humans and computers make the perfect pair”. The third-act twists, involving a sobriety sponsor (Chris Sullivan) and a convoluted revenge plot, are so nonsensical they border on insult.
Conclusion
Mercy is a film that thinks it’s Minority Report but plays more like a high-budget aggressive tech demo. It’s a “make-dinner” movie—something you put on in the background while you chop vegetables, only looking up when something explodes. Despite its box office success as a crowd-pleaser, it left me cold. If this is the future of justice, I’d like to request a lawyer.
My Rating: ★★☆☆☆ (2/5)
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