Finally made myself watch Mercy (2026), with Chris Pratt as the falsely accused cop Chris Raven and Rebecca Ferguson as the AI judge, Maddox, presiding over his case. I was pensive because Mercy has already been badmouthed online, and it is a Netflix production to boot. But believe it or not, it’s pretty darn good!

By Emad Aysha
The story starts slow, with off-queue performances and unconvincing dystopian world-building. I kept thinking of similarly themed movies that did a better job, even on a lower budget. Cyber Tracker (1994), Firepower (1993), The Running Man (1987), and, of course, my personal John Carpenter favourite, Escape from New York (1981).

Afterwards, however, Mercy really perks up in terms of pacing, humour, tension, action, and, critically, performances. The film also has the right amount of misdirection, which is such a key ingredient. Raven’s wife, Nicole (Annabelle Wallis), is brutally murdered (with a steak knife), and he gets himself drunk and resists arrest on film. Crime of passion, case closed.

RESCUE RIDER: Kali Reis plays Chris Pratt's partner here. She's the only chance in hell he has of proving his innocence, quite literally floating to his aid.

Then we find out his daughter was seeing some deadbeat boy, smoking drugs and complaining about AI ruling our lives, and so you think the boyfriend did it. We also learned that Raven’s wife was having an illicit relationship with a black dude, a chef who is comfortable with a carving knife (hint, hint).

The guy turns out to be innocent, but has some interesting tidbits that put them on the right track. That’s when Chris Pratt’s acting gets into key, and Rebecca Ferguson stops being an ice queen as Maddox breaks some of her protocols and actually shows some mercy to the suspect.

I don’t want to blow the movie for you, so I won’t tell you what happens. The important thing is that the film is really good overall, with a nice moral punchline at the end. Like all SF movies, since the turn of the century, it’s increasingly hard to relate to them because technology has become so advanced that you aren’t as impressed anymore by the future.

We already have these little gizmos and consumer conveniences, so we aren’t as thrilled as before. At the same time, the clunkiness of so many of these technological advances makes you think of the ‘inconvenience’ of it all. This has affected everything, even the James Bond franchise, which was always the trailblazer for gizmos and gadgets.

The same here, with Instagram, cloud tech, email, spy cams, and iPhones being too close for comfort. The casting isn’t superb either, with people who are too realistic-looking for you to enthuse about. I presume Chris Pratt had to sit in a room by himself, speaking to a blue screen, which took him out of the mood as well.

The same is probably true of Rebecca Ferguson. Fortunately, once the story's intensity revs up, everything revs up with it. One small exception is Raven’s troublesome daughter, Britt (Kylie Rogers). She’s natural throughout, whether scared out of her mind or being a spoilt brat.

The same for her sleazebag boyfriend, Noah Fearnley. The bit-part actors also do their roles surprisingly well, especially the deadbeat cops. I presume because they were in natural environments interacting with people and tangible things in front of them.

The movie is suffering from the very technological overkill that the story is condemning; how ironic. Still, it’s a cool movie and worth watching, since the immersive POV perspective does get you into the action, combined with the music, and, most of all, with the improving performances of the two main characters.

Special mention, then, should go to the director, Timur Bekmambetov, the Russian guy who was responsible for the breakout movie Night Watch (2004). He was also the producer on the incredible pov Russian sci-fi/action classic Hardcore Henry (2015) by Ilya Naishuller.

HARD CASE: Rebecca Ferguson in 'Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation' (2015), playing Ilsa Faust - the victim of AI in 'Dead Reckoning'!

I guess it takes people from less advanced countries around the world, who grew up with analogue technologies, to think through problems and innovate solutions for the high-tech gizmos dominating modern moviemaking.

Yet another irony: making old-world directors and producers the best people to tackle these complex themes. Justice is carried out in the end. Raven is exonerated, the bad guy is discovered, and even that guy gets to make his case and get some posthumous justice.

There is some political messaging in the movie, too. When we’re introduced to the chef Nicole is secretly dating, I straight away thought of the O.J. Simpson case. It turns out one of the suspects, even one brought in for questioning, was another son of his from a black wife who was a chef.

The other son was also notoriously violent and liked to use his carving knife in those personal incidents. And, wouldn’t you know it, O.J. was accused of killing his ex-wife, 'Nicole' Brown Simpson. Hmmm!

The story takes place in Los Angeles, by pure coincidence, with a corrupt cop as the missing link in all the events. The irony is that the corruption isn’t driven by money but by revenge. Raven himself was the first guy to arrest somebody for the Mercy system, and he got into this state of mind because he lost his partner to somebody who got off scot-free.

Mercy is always above justice, as we say in Islam, citing the Prophet Solomon as an example, against his own father, the Messenger David (PBUH). Gut instinct and intuition always have their place too, beyond cold, hard logic.

Raven himself explains to Maddox that we’re all programmed, humans included, but the key is to learn from our mistakes. So, a supercool movie that is a must-watch.

That being said, I ‘still’ prefer the older school movies, including, of course, Minority Report (2002), from sci-fi legend Philip K. Dick.

My author friend Ammar al-Masry has translated the original story, and liked it better than the movie since it’s a total surveillance, total justice system.

TO DIE FOR: Annabelle Wallis plays Nicole Raven. A classroom case of crime of passion or yet another put-up job in a justice system that's has no mercy for the victims?

Let’s hope Dick wasn’t a precog himself, or God help us all. Moviemakers and their own passionate crimes included!!