Mercy is a film about AI that wants to be taken seriously. But serious is difficult with a film that stars Chris Pratt as a cop called Chris. Cop Chris wakes up from a drinking binge with amnesia and his wrists manacled to an execution chair. In front of him is a screen on which appears Judge Maddox.
Played by House of Dynamite’s Rebecca Ferguson, Maddox is the telegenic manifestation of an AI court that Cop Chris helped set up to cope with an increasingly violent society.
Pitiless but fair Maddox (with her AI hair slicked back as if the court were sponsored by a hair gel product) informs Chris that he is accused of murdering his wife and that he has 90 minutes to prove his innocence after which he will be executed. Defendants in the Mercy Court are presumed guilty until proved innocent.
Chris has to mount his own defence and at his disposal is every digital piece of evidence stored in the cloud, from CCTV to his daughter’s Instagram account. He can also cross examine anyone he thinks is relevant to his case as Maddox apparently has every living person’s number in her Rolodex. His fellow cop and partner Jacqueline (Kali Reis) helps his cause by tracking down real world leads in real time. As does Rob, Chris’s “mentor” in his AA programme.
Chris knows he is pickled in more ways than one. He founded the system that is judging him. Indeed we learn he arrested Maddox’s first defendant, a homeless man who failed to prove his innocence and was executed for murder.
Director Timur Bekmambetov and writer Marco van Belle are not interested in interrogating how a homeless person was expected to defend himself. He would have had the same resources as Chris but none of the investigative skills of a cop who, despite the manacles, can swipe left, right, up and down through Maddox’s holographic evidence like a toddler on their parents’ mobile phone.
Bekmambetov is the Kazakh-Russian director credited with developing the Screen-life film-making style in which the action takes place almost entirely on a screen. It is a genre that Prime’s recent version of War of the Worlds has done much to discredit. Bekmambetov’s film, which in 3D allows holograms to brush past one’s ears like a breeze, will do little to rehabilitate the style’s reputation.
The action is speedy yet lacks tension. More problematic is that when Chris’s fearless partner Jacqueline takes to the air on her flying bike in pursuit of suspects, the film becomes less high-tech whodunnit and more Paw Patrol.
Cert PG 13
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