Mercy (dir. Timur Bekmambetov)

By: Adam Freed

A.I. alarmists and conspiracy theorists beware, Mercy is not going to do anything to ease the troubled hearts of those hesitant to submit to a future controlled by the digital mind.  This isn’t to say that Timur Bekmambetov’s science fiction whodunnit acts as an Ex Machina (2014) style condemnation of artificial intelligence, but rather a sample of the type of digital slop that it is liable to create.  Mercy looks and feels as if it were created with the same hasty care that a lazy eighth grader may put into prompting ChatGBT into writing a literary analysis of Animal Farm.  

Ironically, the futuristic courtroom story in which the accused is given only 90 minutes to convince an A.I. Judge of their innocence beyond a reasonable doubt to prevent execution, is so shoddily constructed that its central premise offers nothing new or innovative, instead it chooses to recycle the central premise of The Fugitive (1993).  But in place of a high voltage chase for truth between Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones, Mercy offers a frustratingly low stakes conversation between its stars Chris Pratt (Jurassic World, Guardians of the Galaxy) and Rebecca Ferguson (Dune, Mission Impossible: Fallout). Despite the proven commodity that both leads offer by way of physical prowess, Ferguson, who plays the artificial Judge Maddox, is only seen in medium closeup and plays no physical role in the film, minus those in which she appears on an annoyingly oversized courtroom screen.  Ferguson’s counterpart, Chris Pratt spends the vast majority of the film strapped to a chair, attempting to solve his wife’s murder, a decision that renders both of the film’s stars inert for a vast majority of the disappointing film.  

Staring at people who are staring at screens has never, and will never, make for exciting storytelling, which is why the decision to take Mercy’s two greatest assets and render them motionless is such a critical misstep at a cellular level.  It is very difficult to believe that Timur Bekmambetov (Night Watch) wouldn’t question the sensibility of only allowing his co-leads to speak to one another through a computer screen. Even audiences drawn in by the mysterious nature of the film’s plot risk potential nausea at the dizzying whirlwind of screens and popups, video calls and handheld bodycam footage.  Optimistically Mercy is intended to target an impatient TikTok audience, perhaps an attempt to embrace, rather than combat, the short attention span needed to imbibe in the film’s shallow execution.  While that explanation may give far more credit to the doomed production than is deserved, it is the only feasible way to unearth any semblance of artistic intention behind Mercy.  If this is the future of whodunnit filmmaking, then perhaps the genre is best laid to rest, only to be lovingly discussed as a distant memory. 

Target Score 3.5/10 - Mercy takes place in a future that has come to rely on artificial intelligence to adjudicate the guilt or innocence of violent criminals.  In the wake of this laughably thin premise, audiences are left with a hastily crafted digital nightmare of a film from Timur Bekmambetov.  Stars Rebecca Ferguson and Chris Pratt are not enough to save this ill-fated futuristic thriller.