'Mercy' review: Chris Pratt revives the terrible January movie

Courtesy of Amazon/MGM

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Over the last few years, the cultural shorthand for the “January movie” has quietly started to shift. Within the past decade, releases like “Paddington 2,” “Companion,” and even this year’s “28 Years Later: The Bone Temple” have made a persuasive case that early January no longer has to function solely as Hollywood’s dumping ground. Heck, even “Bad Boys for Life,” “Scream,” and “M3GAN” proved that the first month of the year could still offer something at least semi-decent, or at the bare minimum, watchable.

Now comes “Mercy,” an agonizing, nearly two-hour dystopian sci-fi thriller in which Chris Pratt spends most of the runtime strapped to a chair, given 90 minutes to prove his innocence to an artificial intelligence judge played by Rebecca Ferguson, who appears to be collecting an effortless paycheck. In other words, I would like to officially welcome back the “January” movie.

This is no “Minority Report,” although one can easily imagine Tom Cruise making this same setup crackle with urgency and paranoia. As an L.A. police detective accused of murdering his wife, Cruise might have found ways to heighten the tension, sell the desperation, and inject life into a fundamentally static premise. Pratt is not that guy. What “Mercy” consistently reminds you of instead is how much time remains on the clock before you can free yourself from this murky, poorly lit 3D exercise and from watching Pratt sit in this stupid chair.

In steadier hands, the premise might have worked. With the rapid rise of AI and the trajectory of our tech-obsessed future, it is not entirely implausible to imagine a world in which an artificial intelligence acts as judge, jury, and executioner, accessing every device, camera, and data stream to build a case against you. In the film, the AI court system is introduced as a means of streamlining justice and cleaning up the streets. There is a genuinely provocative idea buried in there somewhere.

Unfortunately, the script by Marco van Belle and the vision of filmmaker Timur Bekmambetov have no real interest in treating that idea with seriousness or curiosity. “Mercy” never meaningfully explores the ethical, societal, or human consequences of an AI-driven justice system. It gestures toward relevance without committing to it, content to coast on a thin hook rather than interrogate what such a system would actually mean.

As the film begins, Pratt’s character, Chris Raven, wakes up barefoot and strapped to an electric chair in a largely empty room, staring down the digital gaze of Ferguson’s AI judge. He is informed that he has 90 minutes to prove he did not murder his wife, played by Annabelle Wallis. There are no juries, no lawyers, and no appeals. Instead, the accused is granted access to a vast swath of national technology, from home security footage to the dark web, to assemble a defense in real time.

Raven remembers very little about the night in question, having gone on a bender the evening before. The film treats it as delicious irony that he was once one of the court system’s most vocal champions and was instrumental in pushing it into existence. Now the system he helped build is actively working against him. We have, of course, never seen that particular narrative turn before.

The movie quickly becomes entangled in a relentless barrage of plot contrivances and tired cliches, each one more grating than the last. It also manages to squander the considerable talent of Ferguson, who is reduced to playing the AI judge with a flat, stoic affect that offers no emotional texture or intrigue. Why cast one of the most compelling actresses working today only to drain her performance of anything resembling personality?

Worse still, “Mercy” gives you little reason to care about its outcome. Emotional investment is impossible when most characters are mediated through FaceTime screens and exposition dumps. Pratt brings no engagement, no charisma, and no urgency. He is a low-energy presence who spends much of the film shouting declarations of his innocence at a screen. Even when the narrative reaches the point where Raven begins assembling the facts of his case, Pratt remains dull and inaccessible.

Part of the problem is structural. Pratt is literally strapped to a chair for nearly the entire runtime, never allowed to move, evolve, or command the space. Considering his background in comedy, it is baffling that he does not lean more heavily into that side of his skill set. Ironically, “Mercy,” with its plot holes and increasingly silly developments, often feels like a comedy anyway, just not on purpose and not in any way that benefits the film.

What remains is a conceptually promising but hollow thriller that mistakes confinement for tension and relevance for substance. “Mercy” does not revive the January movie so much as resurrect everything audiences hoped the month had finally outgrown.

Grade: D-

MERCY is now playing in theaters.