Director Timur Bekmambetov\u2019s latest is a baffling piece of work that happily swipes the mood and aesthetics of Hollywood\u2019s police state dystopias (Minority Report, RoboCop, Blade Runner etc), while presenting such horrors as an agreeable norm. It opens with a voiceover so menacingly chipper you\u2019d naturally assume it to be satirical (it\u2019s not): there\u2019s a crime epidemic in Los Angeles being squarely blamed on civil unrest and homelessness, leading to the creation of the Mercy court.<\/p>\n
The accused are strapped to a chair in front of AI Judge Maddox (Ferguson), who is equipped with a touchscreen tablet containing unfettered access to people\u2019s data. The accused are also assumed to be guilty, and have 90 minutes to essentially google their way into innocence \u2013 otherwise they\u2019re terminated on the spot.<\/p>\n
Chris Pratt<\/a>, here interchangeable with any other famous Hollywood Chris<\/a>, plays Chris Raven, the cop who arrested the very first man processed by the Mercy court. Now he wakes up in the chair, though, accused of murdering his wife (Annabelle Wallis) and hungover with no memory of the day. So he starts commanding Maddox to pull up phone records, Instagram accounts and emails, which all fly out on screens towards him and at us (especially if you choose to see the film in 3D). The aim is to immerse us as much as possible.<\/p>\n Bekmambetov was instrumental in popularising the \u201cscreenlife\u201d film, in which events are captured entirely within the digital realm via phone or computer, having produced early hits Unfriended (2015) and Searching (2018), as well as last year\u2019s notorious Ice Cube-led War of the Worlds. It\u2019s an arresting gimmick, though it\u2019s yet to really prove itself as much more than a gimmick, and Mercy barely qualifies since the camera cuts back so frequently to Pratt\u2019s pained expressions.<\/p>\n Yet any effort to force us to identify with Chris comes to naught. Any promising idea leads to a dead end. It\u2019s a maddening watch. Chris, it\u2019s revealed, has a violent temper. Perhaps Mercy will ask us to question the true meaning of justice by having us root for an unlikeable but ultimately innocent protagonist? No, that goes nowhere. What about the violation of privacy in the pursuit of justice? Is it ever ethical? His daughter (Kylie Rogers) confronts him about the fact that he\u2019s snooped on her phone. He agrees it\u2019s not right, then continues to snoop. Surely, Mercy will at least question whether Judge Maddox can be trusted with a human life?<\/p>\n It\u2019s a no to that as well, and, despite Ferguson\u2019s skilfully artificial performance, Marco van Belle\u2019s script either doesn\u2019t address the fact Maddox is slowly gaining sentience or fundamentally doesn\u2019t understand how AI works. After a few pointless twists and turns, Mercy eventually reaches the conclusion that its chosen dystopia \u2013 where segregated, militarised red zones are constructed around undesirable chunks of the city and police brutality is rampant \u2013 would actually be fine with some minor improvements. We\u2019re left with the observation that \u201chuman or AI, we all make mistakes and we learn\u201d. It\u2019s quite the conclusion to come to for a film about capital punishment.<\/p>\n![\"Kali](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/MERCY_Day14_5134_06404_R.jpeg\")
Kali Reis and Chris Pratt in \u2018Mercy\u2019 (Amazon MGM Studios)<\/p>\n