The insertion of artificial intelligence (A.I.) in storytelling used to be entirely science fiction in the same way that submersible technology (Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea) or watch phones (Dick Tracy) were. Now, however, A.I. is being worked into the things that make sense (Siri, Google Voice, Alexa) and into the things that don’t (kitchen appliances). When A.I. wasn’t a factor in everyday life, it was easy to allow a screenwriter’s imagination to make us believe in a program’s autonomy and emotional intelligence (Joi in Blade Runner 2049); however, now, the ethical, moral, and technological limitations are all too present, making the use of it in storytelling a statement (intentionally or otherwise) on its inclusion. Strangely, filmmaker Timur Bekmambetov’s (Profile) Mercy, a screenlife real-time techno procedural starring Chris Pratt (Passengers) and Rebecca Ferguson (Reminiscence), appears to make a statement in favor of the surveillance state and extra-judiciary processes while actively avoiding the obvious failures of such a system, especially when it relies on A.I. for data processing. Now on home video devoid of bonus features, the film’s statement just grows louder in the absence of creator intention.
In a not-so-distant future, an increase in crime in Los Angeles results in a shift in the justice system to deliver faster judgement and punishment through the Mercy Courts, an artificial intelligence system. These courts have seen 18 defendants come through, each given 90 minutes to defend themselves using all the information the A.I. judge can access; however, if they can’t demonstrate their innocence, they are executed. LAPD Detective Chris Raven (Pratt) is the 19th defendant to appear in Mercy Courts with his case presided over by Judge Maddox (Ferguson). He has 90 minutes to prove his innocence, but evidence is not on his side and the clock is ticking.
As a screenlife real-time techno procedural, the script by Marco van Belle (Arthur & Merlin) does what it says on the box. The film opens with a commercial for Mercy that serves as both the start of the hearing and establishing sequence for the audience. The clock only starts once Judge Maddox calls the court to order and, once done, it doesn’t stop. This, by itself, is intriguing as it requires a lot of the cast and the script to keep things perpetually pumping. To that end, Pratt spends the majority of the film locked in a chair while his Raven argues with Ferguson’s Maddox and both review video footage of past events. It’s mainly in these segments that Pratt is freed from the chair, which necessitates the primarily physical actor to rely on facial expression and dynamic dialogue delivery (which are not always his strengths compared to his physicality since transitioning into action). For those seeking an edge-of-your-seat thriller, van Belle has considered almost all of the potential pitfalls of such restricted storytelling, almost always cleverly finding ways in which the deus ex machina for Mercy is quite literally Maddox, which is also where the film struggles and falls apart when viewed as anything more than a traditional interpersonal thriller.
In the 9th grade, roughly mid-1990s, I had a math teacher/computer lab instructor who taught me something that has lingered in my brain ever since: “computers only do exactly what you tell them.” It doesn’t matter if you understand why the computer is functioning as it is, it’s doing the function you instruct it to do, even if that means the system goes haywire or crashes. van Belle’s script tells us quite plainly that Maddox and the other Mercy judges are A.I. programs, which means that they are specifically designed to follow a path of instruction and not to deviate. Except Maddox does. It’s important to the story that Maddox does. Without it, the conclusion would be vastly different. It’s a human notion that robotics want to be like us, containing empathy and imagination, but, sci-fi aside, they can’t. The fact that Maddox becomes capable of performing tasks or responding to situations outside its perimeters is a hand-wave that starts to break the rules of the film. The reason this matters is because the film’s stance is that A.I. is good, that it’s protective and helpful, and doesn’t touch the clear and present danger to safety, security, and privacy that this court (which translates to law enforcement and government agencies) has access to. The conclusion of the film even leans into how the entire situation required human involvement to come to an audience-satisfying end, rather than being a cautionary tale of what it means when humanity hands over services to A.I. without human oversight or involvement.
Consider a few things here in terms of the narrative and the film’s perspective. Raven is a detective and not the first one to find themselves in a position to defend their presumed innocence, whether in the real world or in fiction. Regardless of your stance on law enforcement, the film’s decision to place Raven as a police officer-turned-defendant means two things: (1) the film wants us to view him as a potential victim and (2) that his background provides him knowledge, know-how, connections, and resources that not a single other Mercy defendant could’ve had. Consider the adage “A lawyer who represents himself in court has a fool for a client.” Lucky for Raven, he’s got insider knowledge that affords him the ability to take action where others can’t. As a result, especially with the tension of the film predicated by the 90-minute clock, things like warrants go out the window as Maddox accesses phone records, financial documents, and even business records of private businesses. One presumes that Maddox is able to do this because, in this world, everything is, by law, required to be cloud assessable and the script takes no time to interrogate this. Taken as a strict techno thriller, why would it? But the choice within the script remains a chilling one. Going further, with the current in-world system, any defendant without Raven’s knowledge would be incapable of putting up a proper defense because, even with all the resources available, they wouldn’t necessarily know the right questions. This is what separates people who know how to do research and those who don’t because the questions need to be framed a certain way in order to narrow a field. Therefore, especially when one considers the way the world is built within van Belle’s script, that the entire Mercy system is intended to project authority and justice, but is strictly a method of removing “undesirables” from the streets. That’s not governance, that’s automated murder and the film has zero interest in examining the danger there.
There’s no rule that Mercy is required to do any of the above. But when one takes even a single moment to consider what’s flowing underneath the script (the percentage of LEOs with the anger issues and violent tendencies that Raven possesses; the use of surveillance tech like Ring to track everyday citizens; backdoor access to private data without a warrant), to think on any of the aspects that the film deems unlawful or unjustifiable (even going so far as to use Escape from New York (1981) logic on presumed “criminals”), as well as what it considers morally right and wrong (using A.I. judges good; human LEOs bad), a picture forms. All I’m saying is that the 1993 Marco Brambilla-directed sci-fi actioner Demolition Man manages to address a lot of the same issues in a traditional narrative format without going out of its way to appease the billionaires (::cough cough Jeff Bezos::) and tech bros who have a lot to lose unless A.I. is normalized.
L-R: Actor Chris Pratt and director Timur Bekmambetov on the set of their film MERCY, from Amazon MGM Studios. Photo Credit: Justin Lubin. © 2025 Amazon Content Services LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Frustratingly, even with all of this, even having Bekmambetov at the helm — director of Night Watch (2004), Day Watch (2006), and Wanted (2008) — nothing rescues the stunt work from looking like strange overpolished A.I. slop. It could be a by-product of trying to be consistent within the “courtroom” versus outside, but all it does is flatten the cinematography entirely and make several sequences degrade in excitement rather than amplify. Between all this, the disinterest in navigating themes beyond the surface, and the absolute absence of bonus features with the physical home release, there’s no reason to pick this up beyond preservation.
No bonus features included with this release.
Available on Prime Video March 22nd, 2026.
Available on 4K UHD, Blu-ray, and DVD April 7th, 2026.
For more information, head to the official Amazon MGM Studios Mercy webpage.
Final Score: 2 out of 5.
Share this:
Categories: Home Release, Home Video, Recommendation, Reviews, streaming
Leave a Reply