Mercy

Boy, is this a strange one. There are few films that invoke the same curious slate of emotions and thoughts as what Mercy put me through during its approximately 100-minute runtime. It's a bizarre project because it asks questions about the increasingly overbearing presence of artificial intelligence in society and then puts forth these arguments in a film format that almost feels like a feature-length TikTok. There's a whole lot here that rubs me the wrong way and yet, somehow, Mercy is quite an entertaining movie.

The plot takes us to a semi-futuristic world overrun by crime and unrest, a portrayal of Los Angeles to be exact where law enforcement and the justice system has decided to take action by eliminating the need for a full jury of one's peers and simply give an accused individual 90-minutes to convince an AI of reasonable doubt against their conviction, by acting as a combined detective and defendant. If they get the guilty percentage beneath 92.5% before the 90-minutes concludes, they will be given a second chance at life, but if they fail, they will be executed in the very chair that currently holds them hostage.

As far as a narrative goes, there's substance and potential here that will hold your attention. The story is set up in a real-time 24-like fashion, where the 90-minutes tick away at an equal rate for Chris Pratt's accused detective, Chris Raven, and for the viewer, and this does a great deal for the tense pacing. But a plot like this also opens the door for all manner of other moral ambiguity, one where you start to become distracted by the premise to ask why anyone in their right mind thought this would be a good idea and why the AI judge (Maddox) played by Rebecca Ferguson is given complete power and autocracy to hack into whatever she wants and access whichever data she desires under the influence of the accused in a bid to hunt for the truth. Should we break any law and cross any boundary in the hunt for justice? That's what this film ultimately had me questioning, despite it not actually really being the point of the story.

But anyway, despite a few uneven ideas and hiccups along the way, there's a rather engaging and fresh plot here that is put together in a compelling fashion. It's no Oscar-winner or written masterpiece, but it does have more substance and style than many modern action epics can boast. Rather, the main issues that Mercy faces is in how it's fundamentally put together as a film, as it's filmed in an almost TikTok-like manner that flits between clips, bodycam footage, and video calls, all while Pratt kicks and screams whenever something doesn't go his way and Ferguson shows absolutely no sign of emotion thanks to portraying a lifeless AI. The best possible way I can describe how Mercy plays out is like a feature length Braindance from Cyberpunk 2077, where we get to study and unravel crime scenes, re-evaluate data and information, read through emails and encrypted messages, all in the hunt for the truth. It's a bizarre setup that makes Mercy feel like it was put together by an AI with a penchant for filmmaking.

While I do think that the strongest part of Mercy is its narrative premise, the movie also makes a rather disappointing move by getting right to the point of beginning to ask some of the major questions I levied above and then simply rolling credits, leaving you with an unsatisfied taste in your mouth, especially considering the rather striking plot twists that occur in the final act. It all feels like a movie that was put together incredibly quickly, which is a bit disappointing as there is potential to explore, especially from a world-building and morality perspective.

It's because of all of this that I'm left a tad bewildered by Mercy. It's not a trainwreck of a film in the same vein as the other recent TikTok-like flick of War of the Worlds, but it also isn't great. There are moments of quality, a story with good potential, a tightly wound pacing that keeps you engaged, but there's also so much on the editing, acting, even creative vision fronts for Mercy to leave a fulfilling impression on you. It's another frankly missable movie even if those who do watch will find that they probably won't hate it, somehow...