Mercy – Movie Review

TL;DR – This is an insipid, soulless, and excruciating attempt to appear relevant, but it ends up having little genuine intellectual fortitude.

Rating: 1.5 out of 5.

Post-Credit Scene – There is no post-credit scene.

Disclosure – I paid to watch this film.

A ticking countdown clock.

Mercy Review Introduction

Now, I’ll be honest from the outset, while I always try to go into a film not knowing the general reaction towards it, sometimes you simply can’t escape finding out. In that vein, I did know that Mercy was generally considered a bit of a dumpster fire before I walked in, but people and critics can be very wrong, so given the cast and the premise, I was ready to give it the benefit of the doubt. I should not have given it the benefit of the doubt.  

So, to set the scene, in the not-too-distant future, Los Angeles is under attack from crime, civil disturbance, and a court system about to fail. To change that up, they institute the Mercy System, where violent offenders of capital crimes are sent to the Mercy Court, where an AI judge (Rebecca Ferguson) gives them 90 minutes to lower their guilt probability to under 92%, or they are instantly executed. One of the early proponents of this new system is LAPD Detective Christopher “Chris” Raven (Chris Pratt), who supported it after his partner (Kenneth Choi) was killed in the line of duty. Which is unfortunate for him, because he now sits strapped to a chair with that same AI judge staring down at him watching a clock count down and a guilt probability that he killed his wife, Nicole (Annabelle Wallis), sitting at 97.5%.

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Exploring the Past – 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

2001 A Space Odyssey. Image Credit: MGM.

2001: A Space Odyssey is a cinematic masterpiece, and when you look at lists of best Science Fiction films or indeed the best films of history it is near, or indeed at the top. However, even though I am a fan of Science Fiction and of innovative filmmaking, this is one film I had actually never gotten to see myself because it is one of those classics that just was never played on TV when I was growing up. However, this week I was given the opportunity to go see a wonderful live performance of 2001: A Space Odyssey put on by the Queensland Symphonic Orchestra, as part of World Science Week Brisbane. So after finally getting to see a masterpiece of cinema I thought it would be a good idea to look at 2001: A Space Odyssey, the film, its legacy, and how well it holds up today.

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