Mercy Movie Review

​In “Mercy,” it’s 2029, Los Angeles. Privacy? There is none. We’re told that there’s so much crime and civil unrest that prison overcrowding is an issue that needs to be addressed, and so is the homeless population.

The Mercy program is the way out of this mess. In a fully autonomous courtroom, the program is the Judge, Jury, and Executioner. So far, 18 people have been judged and sentenced using this new method, which has saved millions and cut the crime rate by 68%. From early scenes, it’s hard to tell that, unless it was so far gone, even filmmakers couldn’t make up how bad it was. Streets seem to still be unusually packed and still rife with filth and cringeworthy wrongdoing.

How does Mercy work? Citizens are first told that Mercy justice is better for their futures. Everyone must register their online information and phone records, and give up access to all cameras and every bit of their electronic presence, so it’s available in the case of a person they know who needs it to clear their name. Judge Maddox (Ferguson) presides over the nineteenth case. That case belongs to Chris Raven (Pratt), a police officer who has 100% advocated for this type of court system. He now finds himself, as others have, waking up to find out he is charged, and what he is charged with has him at 97.5% probability of guilt, enough to sanction a Mercy trial. He learns that he now has only 90 minutes to get an AI judge to believe he didn’t commit the crime he’s charged with, which is killing his wife. If his guilt can’t drop below 92%, it’s curtains for him.

He’s strapped in a chair (the only acting Pratt can do is with his eyes, face, and voice, not a stretch for him), and about all he can do is tell the truth and hope. The trial commences, and it’s explained that he’s allowed to access immediate information, past or current, that will help his case. He can call people, review records, emails, private Instagram accounts, and anything else that could be considered essential to the case. He gets on the phone with a colleague, JAQ (Kali Reis), who helps him track down the individual his wife was having an affair with. The probability of killing her actually goes up because he took a person who could have done it off the list of possible suspects.

As he and JAQ work the case, the judge speaks to him, even helps him some. If he misses something in the neighbor’s bird camera, adorable footage, by the way, she can bring it to his attention. He learns some things from her. In turn, he tries to teach her things that aren’t part of her programming. The biggest thing he needs her to “feel” is empathy. I think that’s a large ask of the audience, but if you’re out to just have fun, and not pick everything apart about this cyber thriller is for you. Don’t let pesky little things, such as a program written to judge the guilty, possibly giving the guy a hand as she glitches, get in the way of your enjoyment. There’s a reference made to the Anarchist Cookbook, which got a big laugh.

Pacing is on target, and the film is engaging enough to have the audience I watched it with cheering a few times. I don’t know why this was presented in 3D. There was nothing special that called for it, so the expenditure for you to watch it that way isn’t warranted. Rebecca Ferguson is flawless; her face was strikingly perfect for Maddox. Though he can be tedious, Chris Pratt does a fair job of selling the storyline. You root for him the whole time, so he manages that. There’s a lot of jumpy camera footage that gets old fast. If you can deal with that, see this at the theater.