{"id":538350,"date":"2026-01-24T01:41:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-24T01:41:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/538350\/"},"modified":"2026-01-24T01:41:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-24T01:41:09","slug":"mercy-review-chris-pratt-is-tried-by-ai-in-schlocky-future-los-angeles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/538350\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Mercy’ review: Chris Pratt is tried by AI in schlocky future Los Angeles"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The schlocky dystopian action thriller \u201cMercy\u201d touts itself as having been \u201cfilmed for Imax,\u201d but that\u2019s not such a selling point when almost the entire film is a dim close-up of Chris Pratt strapped to a chair. This real-time AI mystery is a mashup of \u201cJudge Dredd\u201d<\/a> and \u201cSearching,\u201d<\/a> in which a Los Angeles detective (Pratt) has to prove himself innocent of murder during a 90-minute trial conducted by an artificially intelligent system called Mercy, presided over by an entity known as Judge Maddox (Rebecca Ferguson).<\/p>\n

Written by Marco van Belle and directed by Russian action auteur Timur Bekmambetov, \u201cMercy\u201d is a remarkably \u2014 though perhaps not surprisingly \u2014 conservative film, one that manages to be both pro-cop and pro-AI. It uncritically presents a city that has been rapidly transformed into a militarized surveillance state, with a judicial system run by robots serving as judge, jury and executioner. But hey, crime is down, or at least cordoned off in the Hollywood \u201cRed Zone.\u201d<\/p>\n

Detective Chris Raven (Pratt), one of the first cops to utilize Mercy to try a murder case, finds himself on the wrong side of the law when his wife (Annabelle Wallis) is found stabbed to death at home; he is located blackout drunk at a bar at 11 a.m. Raven wakes up already inside the Mercy system with 90 minutes to prove his innocence or at least get his probability of guilt under 92% and avoid instant death. He has the entire AI surveillance apparatus at his fingertips, including police bodycam footage, video doorbells and social media accounts connected to the \u201cmunicipal cloud,\u201d and he gets the option to phone a friend, like his partner, Jaq (Kali Reis), distraught daughter Britt (Kylie Rogers) and sponsor Rob (Chris Sullivan), to try and pull the pieces together.<\/p>\n

Of course all of this material is to make the film more cinematic, because watching Pratt and Ferguson talk to each other when they aren\u2019t even in the same room isn\u2019t all that compelling, filmed for Imax or not. But Bekmambetov and cinematographer Khalid Mohtaseb, as well as a team of six editors, have stitched together the shaky camera footage and the hands-free interface into a visual \u201csurfing the web\u201d aesthetic that can only be described as stomach-churning. Don\u2019t sit too close to this one \u2014 the quick swiping through bodycam and cellphone footage on a huge screen is migraine-inducing. (Fine, I guess there are two ways to describe it.)<\/p>\n

Since the film is a little over 90 minutes, our street-smart detective, who has relied on his gut and the terrifyingly invasive AI tools throughout the trial, is finally liberated from the chair in the third act, as the twisty-turny tale morphs into an attack on Mercy itself. There is some excellent location shooting in downtown Los Angeles during the climax, seen through the lens of a bodycam or quadcopter or drone camera. It\u2019s not enough to save the aesthetic of the entire film, though, which is somehow both gray and nauseating.<\/p>\n

\u201cMercy\u201d essentially argues that it\u2019s the people behind the prompts who make artificial intelligence work (or not). Every person and system is fallible, but there\u2019s no substitute for instinct \u2014 can a robot achieve that kind of intelligence? The film presents a fable in which a cop and a machine find their way through the maze of this mystery, essentially arguing that law enforcement should have access to this kind of surveillance, which is a concept more sickening than the jiggly found footage.<\/p>\n

One would hate to see the carbon footprint<\/a> of these AI trials. It\u2019s laughable to suggest that the biggest problems of a near-future Los Angeles using an AI-powered judicial system would be a few scruffy Hollywood meth dealers \u2014 how would the city even have enough drinking water if it\u2019s serving all those data centers? Perhaps those are the more pertinent questions, but \u201cMercy\u201d doesn\u2019t choose to engage with them.<\/p>\n

‘Mercy’<\/p>\n

Rated: <\/b>PG-13, for violence, bloody images, some strong language, drug content and teen smoking<\/p>\n

Running time: <\/b>1 hour, 40 minutes<\/p>\n

Playing: <\/b>In wide release Friday, Jan. 23<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The schlocky dystopian action thriller \u201cMercy\u201d touts itself as having been \u201cfilmed for Imax,\u201d but that\u2019s not such…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":538351,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[57124,1582,276,27165,91750,237857,4446,237858,237859,49682,18044,2961,3228,224,2444,5337,148844,108703,2290,104421],"class_list":{"0":"post-538350","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-bodycam","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-chair","12":"tag-chris-pratt","13":"tag-conservative-film","14":"tag-death","15":"tag-first-cop","16":"tag-intelligent-system","17":"tag-judge-dredd","18":"tag-kind","19":"tag-la","20":"tag-law","21":"tag-los-angeles","22":"tag-los-angeles-times","23":"tag-losangeles","24":"tag-mercy","25":"tag-rebecca-ferguson","26":"tag-review","27":"tag-robot"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115947535460968582","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538350","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=538350"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538350\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/538351"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=538350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=538350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=538350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}