Action
Crime
Review: ‘Mercy’ is an AI-Themed, Screenlife Mystery that Squeezes All the Thrills It Can From Its High-Concept, Paper-Thin Premise
January 22, 2026Ben MK
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As Star-Lord in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Owen Grady in the Jurassic World films, and Emmet Brickowski in The Lego Movie series, Chris Pratt is no stranger to blockbuster franchises. Outside of those established IPs, however, Pratt's luck at the box office has been somewhat hit-and-miss. Whether it's lending his voice to everyone’s favorite lasagna-loving feline in The Garfield Movie or playing an action hero in straight-to-streaming releases like The Tomorrow War and The Electric State, the 46-year-old actor has certainly had his share of commercial and critical misfires. Still, that hasn't stopped him from taking on leading roles — and with the AI-themed thriller Mercy, Pratt is returning to the sci-fi genre once again, playing a veteran cop who finds himself on the wrong side of the law. Set in a not-to-distant future where law enforcement officers fly over the city in drone-like quadcopters and criminals are prosecuted and sentenced in a virtual courtroom presided over by artificial intelligence, the story follows Chris Raven (Pratt), a hardened street cop, husband to wife Nicole (Annabelle Wallis), and father to teenage daughter Britt (Kylie Rogers). One of the earliest proponents of the Mercy Court, a cutting-edge system where law-breaking citizens are assumed guilty unless they are able to prove their innocence to an AI judge within 90 minutes, Chris has dedicated most of his adult life to upholding the law and bringing criminals to justice. However, when he himself is arrested and charged with Nicole's brutal murder, he'll find himself treated live every other perp he has ever sent to stand trial. Strapped to a high-tech chair that will electrocute him in exactly an hour-and-a-half if he's unaable to provide a convincing defense to the virtual judge Maddox (Rebecca Ferguson), Chris must race against the clock to prove his innocence and identify his wife's murderer. But even with the entire city's cloud data available at his fingertips, will he succeed at this life-and-death challenge? Enlisting the help of his partner, Jaq (Kali Reis), his AA sponsor, Rob (Chris Sullivan), and various other individuals along the way, Chris must piece together all the evidence in an attempt to make sense of his wife's murder and uncover the reason behind why someone might want her dead. But as he gets closer and closer to solving this heinous crime, will he be prepared to face the cold hard truth? Could his hard drinking and troubled marriage have contributed to Nicole's fate? And even if he wasn’t actually responsible for what happened to his wife, could he have done anything differently to avoid this terrible outcome? Either way, the countdown to his ultimate demise remains imminent, and every second matters, as Chris is forced to set aside his personal feelings and employ all of his detective skills in order to follow the trail of digital crumbs that can lead him to the real culprit. The question is — when he finally unmasks who is really responsible and the larger-scale plot that he and his family have unwittingly found themselves a part of, will he be able to bring that person to justice? And will he be able to free himself of the Mercy chair before even more innocent people are killed or injured? Directed by Timur Bekmambetov and written by Marco van Belle, the result is one part Minority Report and one part Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, as Pratt spends 90% of the film in said chair, while the audience watches him swipe through an array of holographic video screens, browser windows and computer interfaces, occasionally stopping to "phone a friend" as his character desperately tries to reduce his guilt level to 92% or below. Nonetheless, despite Mercy's somewhat uninteresting on-screen execution, this hi-tech whodunnit still manages to squeeze a decent amount of thrills out of its paper-thin premise, thanks to a fairly engaging core mystery, a handful of surprising twists and turns, and committed performances from its leads. Make no mistake, Mercy is by no means a masterpiece; and to even place it in the same category as Minority Report is a stretch. That said, moviegoers looking for a check-your-brain-at-the-door type of experience will still be decently entertained by this high-concept crime thriller. And as far as the screenlife genre goes, it may even be one of the better entries as of late. Although, when the most recent screenlife movie that comes to mind is the War of the Worlds remake starring Ice Cube, it's certainly a low bar to clear. Mercy releases January 23rd, 2026 from Amazon MGM Studios. The film has an MPAA rating of PG-13 for violence, bloody images, some strong language, drug content and teen smoking. Its runtime is 1 hr. 40 min. |
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