In Mercy, a detective awakens in a stark interrogation room in a future where he is strapped to the chair of an all-seeing AI judge he once helped create. Accused of murdering his wife, he has only a handful of minutes to confront the evidence—and the system itself—before an irreversible verdict is delivered.

Mercy MINI-Review

Ten million dollars for four weeks of work, most of it spent strapped into a chair. No doubt that was the pitch that got Chris Pratt onboard for Mercy. The so-called “action” thriller comes from the same production team that delivered the otherworldly awful War of the Worlds starring Ice Cube, and it uses the same basic gimmick—this time juiced up with a little creatine and a lot more charisma. Somehow, almost miraculously, the formula mostly works.

Like it or not, AI is here, and no amount of whining from spoiled Hollywood actors is going to shove it back into its digital bottle. It’s already been onboarded into the daily routines of most Americans, and with its exponential growth in both sophistication and accessibility, it’s hard not to wonder if Skynet is lurking just around the corner.

That murky space between chrome-plated nightmares wiping out humanity and our first real experiments in handing over genuine authority to machines is where Mercy plants its flag.

Comic-level convenience and contrivance propel the story forward, relying on wild leaps of logic and intuition that function less as problem-solving and more as connective tissue between plot points. Still, thanks to solid pacing and some welcome stylistic flair from director Timur Bekmambetov, the movie is never boring. Dumb? Absolutely. But never boring.

That’s the film’s Achilles’ heel. To enjoy it, you have to power down the logic centers of your brain and commit to a herculean act of willful suspension of disbelief. If you can manage that, Pratt delivers, and the premise raises just enough unsettling questions—ones we’re going to be forced to confront in the real world sooner rather than later—to make the ride worthwhile.

Is it worth buying a ticket? No. Is it even worth a rental? Probably not. But once it hits streaming, Mercy is absolutely Worth It.

WOKE REPORT

DEI

• Sure, lady cops are a thing, but putting a single one on the street who isn’t a physical match for their male counterparts is woke. Does that make it woke when a movie, set in relative modernity, casts a woman in the role? Maybe. However, when a woman who isn’t a particularly good actress or terribly attractive is cast in one of a film’s limited major roles, it’s hard to see any reason other than identity politics for her hiring.
  • Kali Reis, who some might recognize as the cranky block of wood from one of the worst seasons of True Detective, plays Chris Pratt’s partner with the emotional range of a brick. However, she is/was a world-class boxer, so she handles the limited number of physical scenes well enough.
    • Her impact on the film is minimal; she’s not distracting, but she also adds nothing and was almost certainly hired to earn the studio some cheap, easy DEI points.