Henry O'Brien
It should come as no surprise to anyone that police surveillance in the United States is so extensive that the American Civil Liberties Union has extensive pages on its website trying to inform citizens of their rights against this. And, since the start of the second Trump administration, the surveillance state has only grown and it’s starting to include artificial intelligence; “Moreover, technologies such as facial recognition and artificial intelligence (AI) will only continue to grow with almost no regulation as tools for policing and immigration enforcement,” writes Maurizio Guerrero in nonprofit news outlet Prism.
Mercy, the latest Dumpuary action movie starring Chris Pratt and Rebecca Ferguson, attempts to use the conventions of the cop drama and mystery genre and place them in a futuristic setting that’s grounded in our present-day anxieties of A.I. However, the film turns out to be nothing but an incompetently-made pro-A.I. copaganda picture that hides sinister undertones about how the surveillance state is good and is a few kinks away from making everyone “safe.”
Set on Aug. 14, 2029, in Los Angeles, the film follows Det. Chris Raven (Pratt), who has 90 minutes to prove his innocence in the case of his wife’s murder, to the Mercy Capital Court and presiding robot judge Maddox (Ferguson). All the while, Raven must find out who the real killer is and save the crime-ridden city from being destroyed.
The whole conceit of the movie, much like 2025’s War of the Worlds, hinges on a character trying to solve the life-or-death task at hand by sitting in front of a computer. For Pratt’s character, this becomes literal as he is strapped into the chair that will kill him if he doesn’t solve the case in time. Unfortunately, much like the Ice Cube-led sci-fi film, this doesn’t lead to any compelling scenes or visuals as the viewer is bombarded by an overwhelming amount of shallow focus, drab colors and crappy CG.
Journeyman director Timur Bekmambetov (Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter) relies on handheld camera footage and computer-generated effects to construct action sequences, but they all end up feeling as though they still need to be rendered or go through another round of editing. The experience gets worse as the camera moves as if we’re following Pratt move around in a seat more fitting for a 4DX movie theater instead of an execution chair.
For any viewer who has seen police officers solving a mystery, the reveals in Mercy won’t be particularly surprising. The story from writer Marco van Belle relies on cliched family dynamics and trauma dumps to build any form of audience connection with Raven, a detective who just recently relapsed and has anger issues. Chris Pratt, who has been in some recent classics such as The Garfield Movie and The Electric State, offers very little to the stereotypical grizzled cop with problems. We’re supposed to feel Chris’s boiling anger and drunken rage throughout many archived video clips that are inexplicably being recorded by his wife and daughter, but Pratt can never commit to either being too angry or too scared that he potentially has 90 minutes left to leave.
Chris Pratt stars as Chris Raven in Mercy. Image: Amazon MGM Studios.
Rebecca Ferguson (A House of Dynamite) has the unique challenge of trying to play Maddox, a character who supposedly has little to no emotions. For as icy as some of Ferguson’s more famous characters are — Lady Jessica in the Dune films or Ilsa Faust in the Mission: Impossible franchise— there is some form of desire or care that belies that sturdy outward appearance. Throughout the film, Judge Maddox starts to glitch and make errors due to the antagonist’s analog methods. This leads Raven to realize that the A.I. judicial system that he so desperately campaigned for is far from perfect and that “gut instincts” and “hunches,” terms foreign to Maddox, hold equal weight in the art of policing.
The larger argument Mercy makes by the end of the 100-minute runtime hides underneath a bleak and fascist worldview. Maddox and Raven eventually go on their own form of a buddy cop journey, where the two start out at-odds with each other before becoming to an understanding that no cop is perfect and recognizing that will lead to better police work and safer communities. The problem with this line of argument is that A.I. isn’t some stiff cop that needs to lighten up. It’s a computer-intelligence system that runs on excessive amounts of resources and, if we are to understand what Judge Maddox is, has access to everyone’s phone and technological device that citizens have to opt into.
At no point does the film even try to question whether or not having artificial intelligence be judge, jury and executioner is moral or just. A subplot in the film, featuring Kali Reis as Raven’s partner on the force, starts to reveal how much cops are using whatever means necessary to make sure people buy into the Mercy Capital Court. The character’s story reeks of the tired “a few bad apples” phrase and not a meaningful interrogation of the police and A.I. Instead, it posits that, while human assistance is needed every now and then, A.I. will make policing and surveillance easier for those who control it. This is backed up in the third act by how Raven briefly comments on how good a job Maddox does in pulling up evidence and different cameras to use.
Just over two weeks after United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement fatally shot 37-year old Renée Good in Minneapolis, Minn., the kinds of films that make police using a scary new technology to control their citizens, like Bekmambetov’s movie, feel abhorrent and out of touch. Police movies with fascist undertones are nothing new for Hollywood. Look no further than Dirty Harry half a century ago. But, as humans get dragged into the A.I. era whether they like it or not, Mercy will sadly start to feel more realistic.
