My favorite genre remains science fiction and it is astounding to me how far the genre has come since its halcyon days of Destination Moon and Tobor the Great.  Even the dopiest sci-fi films of the past couple of decades contain imagination and technological advancements that could not have been imagined eighty years ago and the best ones boast elements that are truly mind-blowing.  Mercy is a film that certainly has such elements, although its approach to its technological largesse somewhat diminishes its impact.

Timur Bekmambetov’s film has a unique premise: a detective (Chris Pratt) awakens in a virtual courtroom, charged with the murder of his wife.  He has just 90 minutes to prove his innocence or he will be executed.  The virtual judge (Rebecca Ferguson) allows him access of evidence to defend himself, but he will have to be quick and direct about it.  If he can lower the court’s perception of probable guilt to less than 80% he will be spared.  But how can he prove that he did not murder his wife, especially when so much evidence points to his guilt (which begins at 97.5% probability)?

To be sure, this is a gimmicky premise, one that flips our democratic notion of “innocent until proven guilty” on its head.  The story’s opening minutes seem like a dystopian, even fascistic future gone wild.  But I give credit to the screenwriter, Marco van Belle, for diving headfirst into this visual smorgasbord of surveillance and digital documentation of every facet of modern life to form a cogent and engrossing mystery which gains power with each new revelation.  The story begins as a future I would absolutely fear yet gradually segues into one where, treated with fairness and ambiguity, the powers-that-be could actually make solid headway against crime and the world safer for everybody.  And the film’s ultimate point is that, in order for fairness and ambiguity to take place, changes by both humans and artificial intelligence are going to be necessary.

By the two-thirds mark or so, I was into the ever-developing scenario and trying to keep up with it.  That leads to the only real criticism I have of this movie — it all takes place too quickly.  It is simply not believable that its story can take place in just 90 minutes.  Even doubling that time period to three hours would be a stretch, I think.  Movies are designed to move fast, of course, but I think this one forces its actions into such a truncated time period that I was unconvinced at times.  And that’s a shame, because it is so well-crafted overall, with such a frightening outlook.  Writer van Belle also does a remarkable job of making the case, finally, that the outlook doesn’t have to be so dark.  I’ll be seeing this one again for sure.  ☆ ☆ ☆.  21 October 2026.