In the near future, a detective stands on trial accused of murdering his wife. He has 90 minutes to prove his innocence to the advanced A.I. Judge he once championed, before it determines his fate.
No filmmaker champions the burgeoning “screenlife” genre more than Timur Bekmambetov. After producing 2015’s “Unfriended,” “Searching,” starring John Cho, and last year’s unmitigated disaster “War of the Worlds,” starring Ice Cube, the Russian filmmaker now takes the director’s chair for “Mercy.” Once a visionary behind hyper-kinetic fever dreams like 2008’s “Wanted,” Bekmambetov now seems content to have all his movies unfold on a computer screen.
Set in the very near future of 2029, Los Angeles enlists the Mercy Court program. This AI-driven apparatus gives the accused 90 minutes to prove their innocence using the digital resources made available to them. If time runs out and they have not lowered their probability of guilt below 92% (apparently the calculated threshold of reasonable doubt), they are executed. It says something about modern-day America that the premise does not sound completely ludicrous. (God forbid they address the underlying causes like poverty, mental health, and unemployment).
The film opens with the Mercy Court’s most vocal supporter, Detective Chris Raven (Chris Pratt), waking up to the AI Judge Maddox (played by Rebecca Ferguson) explaining to him that he stands accused of murdering his wife. He has 90 minutes to use the digital resources of the surveillance state, his family’s smartphones, and his one phone call to prove his innocence, or face the same fate as the criminals he’s arrested in the two years since Mercy has been implemented. Ferguson’s cold, calculated delivery serves the role well—Maddox serves as Los Angeles’ judge, jury, and executioner.
There’s little time for either character to process the irony of the situation as Raven must put together all the pieces of his “digital footprint” with the recorded events of his and his late wife’s failing marriage, all while the clock counts down in the corner of the screen.
The musical score feels like someone clanging cymbals right next to your head the entire time. Blaring horns try to make every single moment of the film feel like some epic revelation, which ends up diluting all the tension. I found the twist predictable, and the film’s message feels as unsubtle as the score. The cliches also made me cringe, including a part where Judge Maddox coldly describes love as a “neurobiological phenomenon.”
What we’re left with is a movie that’s essentially a sub-par rip off of “Minority Report”—a controversial method of fighting crime endorsed by a detective with a tragic past until he finds himself on trial by the very system he championed. “Mercy” is that, minus the storytelling flair. The film doesn’t say anything about proper, humanitarian ways to address violent crime, and vehemently endorses the surveillance state. The film isn’t a complete insult to the audience’s intelligence as the trailer led us to believe, and there are worse ways to spend 100 minutes. But unless you’re a huge Chris Pratt fan, you can skip this one.
In Theaters Friday, January 23rd
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