Director: Timur Bekmambetov
Writer: Marco van Belle
Stars: Chris Pratt, Rebecca Ferguson, Kali Reis
Synopsis: 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.
It pains me to give a thumbs down to Mercy, a film from Timur Bekmambetov, the man behind the misunderstood historical-fiction “classic” (I’m putting the word in quotes so my editor won’t cut off my access to the InSession Film Slack account), Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. A pioneer of the “screenlife” genre, Bekmambetov helped usher in films like Searching, Missing, Unfriended, and, yes, the infamous 2025 Ice Cube entry, War of the Worlds.
So yes, Bekmambetov’s career has taken a downturn since that pre-Civil War horror epic. Unfortunately, while he has continued to excel as a producer, his directorial efforts feel less inspired, like a young Lincoln wildly swinging an axe, missing the mark, and somehow still managing to give cinema a bad name.
Those are the thoughts I had with Mercy, a perfectly serviceable film because it is a watered down rip off of Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report, until it begins to turn a corner that feel like plot points were dropped (or ignored) as if Bekmambetov was treating the medium of cinema as an exercise in logistics, losing nuance, emotional beats, and rushing transitions that make the story too clean, too predictable, and too conventional.
The story begins with Detective Christopher “Chris” Raven (Chris Pratt), an officer in the LAPD, who wakes up on trial for the murder of his wife, Nicole (Annabelle Wallis). Chris is not in a normal courtroom. He is awakened by Judge Maddox (Rebecca Ferguson), who is an artificial intelligence adjudicator of the Mercy program, a piece of software that Chris helped create, to cut all the red tape and lawyer tricks in the name of justice.
The gist of the trial is simple: he has 90 minutes to prove his innocence, or he will be convicted of murder, with Maddox serving as judge, jury, and executioner. As a screenlife film, Maddox allows Detective Raven to comb through the private digital accounts of his wife, his daughter, and the suspects. Along the way, we learn that Chris has had a rough stretch in recent years, including a struggle with alcohol following the on-the-job death of his former partner (Kenneth Choi).
To piece things together, he must rely on his inner circle, a group of people who may suspect that Chris did it, or may be suspects themselves. This includes his new partner, Jaq (True Detective: Night Country’s Kali Reis), whom Raven asks to track down leads. Also among the last people to see his estranged wife alive is Rob (This Is Us’s Chris Sullivan), his AA sponsor, who has become part of the family. There is also his daughter, Britt (Beau Is Afraid’s Kylie Rogers), whose unresolved grief leads her to question her father’s innocence.
Mercy starts serviceable, like a digital puzzle-box screenlife thriller with an intriguing setup, dropping the viewer into an unfamiliar world. However, Pratt’s performance ultimately falls short, failing to generate the sustained, believable anxiety essential to a film like this, especially one that functions as a tricked-up, single-location exercise. Frankly, watching Pratt trying to cry and look scared is like watching a narcissist with crocodile tears.
Then there’s the bigger issue: Bekmambetov’s plotting, which is among the most convoluted I’ve seen in a thriller in recent memory. That shouldn’t be a surprise coming from an accomplished producer, screenlife films are built to save on costs, often delivering the most basic, paint-by-numbers version of the genre while dutifully following the plot-point playbook step by step. Here, the film piles on red herrings that exist only to distract.
There is no payoff or logic, gleefully teasing that the wife is involved in something shady or that the “real” villain abducts someone for reasons the story never earns or even explains. This is the kind of movie where you can narrow the outcome down to one or two endings and twists within the first 15 minutes. Compounding the problem is a script with all the backbone of a perimysium, suggesting that Ferguson’s AI Judge can suddenly make rational judgments and display human emotion simply because Pratt’s character orders her to do so.
Yup, if that wasn’t proof the software was created by a man as a flight of cinematic fancy, nothing will.
Mercy is simply not worth watching, in the theater or on demand. The experience quickly collapses into a convoluted, paint-by-numbers screenlife picture, packed with bad performances, yawn-inducing plot points, and a few empty red herrings. So, instead of paying over fifty-dollars for tickets and snacks, stay home, pay just under four bucks (or watch for free on HBO), Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, and thank me later.
You can watch Mercy only in theaters starting January 23rd!
