With Mercy’s high stakes and its first-person camera work, it brings realistic tension that will have you invested and on the edge of your seat the whole time.
Mercy’s premise is already catching: a man built a courtroom with an AI judge that gives the defendant a certain amount of time to prove their innocence while having access to all cameras in the city and all data from any device that’s connected to the cloud. The movie starts with the man who built it — Chris Raven, who’s played by Chris Pratt — waking up strapped in the chair of the courtroom he built and being informed that he has an hour and a half to prove he didn’t murder his wife or he will be executed.
What really makes this film stand out so much is the many aspects of it that make it feel real and bring you in, making you feel the same anxiety the main character does. You are stuck in this metal room with Chris almost the whole film with him tied to a chair sitting face to face with the AI judge while camera footage and phone data pops up in front of her. There is an accurate countdown in the corner of the screen for most of the movie, showing that all of this happens in real time and there are many first-person shots from Chris’ point of view where you see all of the options of the things he possibly could look through to try and find his innocence. A lot of the things Chris sees resemble pop ups on a computer, something we’re all familiar with, which adds to the realistic feeling and brings a sense of being overwhelmed when they start overlapping, just how Pratt’s character is feeling. There are shots where you see directly into the face of the AI judge Maddox, who is played by Rebecca Ferguson. You are forced to look directly into her face while she tells Chris what the percentage chance is that he’s found guilty. Shots and details like this make you feel like you’re there and involved.
Ferguson’s acting in this film was really unique. She’s emotionless, and yet at times seems to be struggling with trying to understand certain feelings. An interpretation of this could be that it comes off that way because that’s what Chris or anyone in that situation would want. You’d want to believe there is some kind of emotion and humanity behind what looks like a real person’s face. This is such a small detail but is just another thing that reals you in. There are also shots from Maddox’s point of view where you see the main character, and this is where Pratt’s acting of desperation and fear really hits.
As captivating and thrilling as this movie was, it could also start a lot of conversations. Yes this is a science fiction film, but it doesn’t feel that far off from a real possibility of our future, which adds to the anxiety you may feel while watching. Artificial Intelligence is constantly advancing and many people use things like ChatGPT or Google Gemini to ask questions about morals and human emotions. AI is becoming something most people rely on in some way or another. This movie shows what it could be like if we put even more faith with higher stakes in AI. Throughout the movie you can see points where Chris realizes the flaws in what he has built. It brings up a lot for the topic of AI. The judge mentions multiple times that it can only look at the facts, but it shows what these things could be like with a lack of human emotion and the flaws that AI can make and could bring into such serious situations. On the other hand, Maddox says at the beginning of the movie that it has learned that everybody lies. This is proven throughout the movie and shows the faults of humans as well. Between the cops, ordinary people and the AI judge, you are shown the mistakes that can be made by everyone and everything. This movie is not pro or anti AI, it doesn’t hold your hand and tell you what you should think, it isn’t black and white. It is a movie about corruption and the grey areas, where nothing is perfect or just.
While the movie didn’t spend a lot of time on character building and some of the plot twists might not be that shocking, the realistic feeling and conversations this movie could bring are definitely reasons to add it to your watch list.
