Mercy (Timur Bekmambetov, 2026)

A strong contender for the most aggressively stupid film I have seen since The Room, Mercy is a dystopian AI fable that, among its many other faults, somehow manages to mangle its message such that it ends up as pro-dystopia.

On the face of it, the film sounds interesting. However, as you will notice, the description gets progressively more stupid as I continue:

Detective Christopher "Chris" Raven (Chris Pratt) wakes up from a drunken stupor to discover he is accused of murdering his wife. He is now on trial for his life. But don't worry! We won't have to sit through weeks of police investigation and evidence discovery, nor listen to boring old LAWYERS drone on about 'due process' or 'Miranda rights'. Yawn.

Due to a generically awful future crime wave (think Robocop meets Escape from New York) the US government (or the state authorities? Who even cares at this point?) rolls out the Mercy Court - AI-powered, fast-track court proceedings for the most serious offenders in which the accused must use any available evidence (helpfully supplied by the court and searchable using one of those floating, see-thru 3D interfaces beloved of this kind of film) to convince an AI judge (Rebecca Ferguson in too much foundation) to reduce their percentage Guiltiness Score below a certain level and avoid instant, no-appeal execution via 'sonic blast' at the end of the trial.

Oh, and the trial takes exactly 90 minutes because of reasons - e.g. the audience would not remain seated for any longer than that.

You can kind of put aside some of the ridiculously unfair elements here (no jury, no right of appeal, no legal representation of any kind) because, well, this is a dystopia, right? Of course things are unfair! Except, this piece of techno copaganda wants us to think that the Mercy system is good and necessary and that the only slight glitch here is whatever conspiracy has resulted in Chris Pratt being wrongly accused.

The 'trial' is conducted by letting the accused examine and present evidence to prove their innocence (i.e. the exact opposite way a trial works) and this part of the film resembles a particular style of investigative videogame, typified by the BAFTA-winning Her Story. In fact, while watching this I kept thinking how much better this premise would have been handled if it was actually a game designed by Her Story and Immortality designer, Sam Barlow. The writing and direction would be better for starters.

But no, this was not an award-winning and groundbreaking videogame. It was... this. So, on we plod.

The Court provides both the evidence collected on the scene by police detectives (a crime scene which, by the way, is still ongoing while the trial takes place!) as well as seemingly unlimited access to surveillance cameras and mobile phone records except in those instances where withholding said information temporarily will add tension to the film. A weird technical limitation, but there you go.

"Chris" is also allowed to speak to witnesses or even people who might give him a character reference. That this is done simply by calling them on their phone and going through an awkward, "Hey, didn't you kill your wife/my friend/my mother/the woman I was having an affair with?!?" preamble before Robo-Ferguson calmly asks them to cooperate did rather seem to work against the - let me stress again - NON-NEGOTIABLE NINETY-MINUTE TIME LIMIT ON THIS GUY'S LIFE. But maybe that's just me being a bleeding heart liberal.

The time limit is also tested somewhat by "Chris" taking time out to gloomily flash back to alcoholic episodes, or those times he wasn't such a great husband or father. Even Robo-Ferguson can't help but suggest that he might want to crack on and do some actual detective work instead so she doesn't have to have him scraped off the walls of the court chamber.

This whole film is a mess. Everyone involved is better than it. Even Chris Pratt. Maybe not the writer & director, who belong in prison. My ability and indeed willingness to watch Rebecca Ferguson flip playing cards into a hat for 90 minutes is well documented but even by my low standards this was something of (hey!) a trial.