This movie is like jury tampering but with A.I.
I guess “Mercy” knows what A.I. represents in our society. It represents how soulless it is, and how the people who wish to use it are lazy. Even at my age I write my own reviews, and even with James Cameron’s advancements in filmmaking, he still believes in artists. So, why not make a movie where the judicial system comes in the form of a computer program? And let’s have a big star being a wrongful victim of it. And that star would be Chris Pratt, since he yells a lot in his movies and just argued with a robot in “The Electric State.”
The time is 2029, which means that since Precrime won’t be invented for another 20 years or so, crime must be reduced by an A.I. judge in a program known as “Mercy.” Her/its name is Judge Maddox (Rebecca Ferguson), and she’s the judge, the jury, and the executioner. So, that would make her an A.I Miss Judge Dredd?
The trial is simple. The defendants have 90 minutes to prove their innocence, past the 97.5% Guilty mark, and if they can’t, it’s an immediate death row for them. And ever since that was created, crime has decreased. Funny, they said the same thing about the Purge, but then, the last entry “The Forever Purge” had everyone going insane ever after the night was over.
We don’t see an example of a random defendant given the death penalty, but we do see the main defendant of “Mercy,” who is Detective Chris Raven (Pratt), who is wrongfully accused of murdering his wife (Annabelle Wallis). He wakes up with very little memory and is horrified by the news of his wife’s death, but Maddox barely gives him a moment of silence. She just begins the trial, while he begins the Peter Quill yelling. As she says: “I am A.I. I do not understand. I comprehend.” Of course, she doesn’t and of course, she comprehends.
Motives of him being guilty include how he handled his alcoholism, who his wife has been seeing, and how their daughter Britt (Kylie Rodgers) is forced to open a second IG account to express how much she hates A.I. So that would be two years in a row that Pratt has been in a bad movie when a young girl has her own ways of protesting against these computer programs. Remember, I hated “The Electric State.”
“Mercy” was directed by Timur Bekmambetov, who previously guided Pratt as James McAvoy’s unfaithful friend in “Wanted.” Parts of the movie have to look like the POV of computers and phones, especially since he produced movies like “Unfriended” and “Searching,” while other times look like a regular action movie. And a little birdie told me, he also produced the infamous “War of the Worlds” movie from last year. So, I guess he’s no stranger to these kinds of films.
When we do get to the real killer of “Mercy,” we try to get back to the real world, when it becomes an action movie regarding a hostage situation and why the hero’s wife was murdered. The results are more interesting than what the judicial system has conjured up, but that’s not enough to be entertaining or thought-provoking.
“Mercy” is a crappy movie, but at least, it isn’t as offensively crappy as “The Electric State.” But you still need to go back to see “Minority Report,” and see how Steven Spielberg showed us a vision of the future and what the law unfolds with Precrime. What the law unfolds with Mercy is just too typical and needs to go back to law school. In person. Not on a computer. And these people need to do their own homework. Somebody always knows if they use A.I.
