Mercy takes place in a near-future Los Angeles where artificial intelligence has transformed the justice system into something far more immediate and terrifying. LAPD detective Chris Raven, played by Chris Pratt, wakes up strapped to a chair inside the newly activated Mercy Capital Court and discovers that he has been accused of murdering his wife, Nicole. With an AI judge controlling the proceedings and only 90 minutes to prove his innocence, Chris must investigate his own alleged crime through the city’s surveillance network before the system executes him.
The idea behind Mercy is much more interesting than the movie that eventually develops around it. The screenplay by Marco van Belle raises legitimate concerns about how much of our lives can already be tracked through smartphones, cameras, social media, databases, and artificial intelligence.
Chris is given access to the Municipal Cloud, allowing him to examine security footage, phone recordings, body cameras, and almost anything else connected to the system. The concept creates a potentially fascinating question: what happens when technology designed to eliminate human mistakes becomes incapable of questioning its own conclusions?
Chris Pratt brings physical presence and familiar action-star energy to Chris Raven, but the role creates a strange limitation because he spends most of the movie trapped in a chair. Pratt has proven himself effective in both comedy and action, particularly in Guardians of the Galaxy, but Mercy rarely allows him to use the physicality that makes him such an entertaining leading man. Rebecca Ferguson is similarly underused as Judge Maddox, the artificial intelligence controlling the trial. Ferguson is an actor capable of enormous intensity, yet here she is essentially a digital voice and face delivering information from a screen.
The supporting characters include Chris’s teenage daughter Britt, played by Kylie Rogers, his LAPD partner Jaq, played by Kali Reis, and his AA sponsor Rob, played by Chris Sullivan. Sullivan brings some welcome humanity to the story, while the other characters often feel more like pieces required to move the investigation forward than fully developed personalities.
Director Timur Bekmambetov has spent roughly 20 years trying to find another blockbuster after Wanted in 2008, but despite several ambitious attempts, he has never managed to recreate that level of impact. His filmography includes Night Watch, Day Watch, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, and Unfriended, while he has also become one of the major producers associated with the screenlife format. The technique has worked effectively in films such as Unfriended, Host, and Missing, but Mercy demonstrates how quickly the approach can become exhausting when the gimmick starts dominating the storytelling.
The movie throws everything at the screen, including cellphone footage, police drones, restaurant cameras, street surveillance, body cams, and even a neighbor’s bird camera. The visual variety initially creates energy, and the 90-minute countdown provides genuine tension, but eventually the constant switching between screens becomes repetitive. The action sequences are similarly energetic, with drone footage and rapid digital transitions creating a kinetic style, yet the camera work often feels designed to keep the screen busy rather than make the action more powerful.
Unfortunately, Mercy also begins with interesting questions and gradually abandons them for increasingly predictable revelations and an increasingly exaggerated final act. What could have been a sharp thriller about artificial intelligence, surveillance, and the danger of automated justice turns into a familiar chase movie with technology layered on top.
Mercy may still work for viewers who enjoy high-concept science-fiction thrillers, Chris Pratt in action roles, or the screenlife format. There are strong ideas here, and the ticking-clock structure occasionally delivers real suspense, but anyone hoping for another Wanted-level breakthrough from Bekmambetov will likely be disappointed.
After two decades of trying to produce another major blockbuster, Mercy feels less like the comeback he has been searching for and more like another ambitious experiment that never fully comes together.
