Alliance Entertainment
The recent movie Mercy comes across like a Twilight Zone episode or, more precisely, a Black Mirror episode. Episodes in the Black Mirror series tend to be strongly built around modern or future tech, and that’s exactly where we find Mercy.
So much of this picture’s view of tech is not only plausible but already here. As little as twenty years ago, this picture couldn’t even have been made.
Let’s face it, Artificial Intelligence is here to stay.
As a meme I keep seeing puts it, “I wanted AI to do my laundry and dishes so I can do my writing and art, not to do my writing and art so I can do my laundry and dishes!”
And therein lies the problem. AI should be seen as a tool—a valuable, useful tool, in theory, but only a tool.
Mercy takes us into a near future where at least one city has come up with the concept of utilizing Artificial Intelligence as judge, jury, and executioner, removing violent criminals from the streets, trying them with completely impartial facts and then, if convicted (and they almost always are if they get that far) quickly, humanely, and confidently executed, all in about an hour and a half.
For the most part, Mercy takes place more or less in real time, with that hour and a half tensely ticking away in a timer that pops up onscreen every once in a while.
Chris Raven is a career police officer who had a hand in creating the Mercy program just a few years earlier. We meet Chris as he wakes up strapped into an electric chair after having been arrested in a drunken stupor for his wife’s murder. He is alone in the room except for a giant screen showing the AI image of a woman whose voice identifies her as Judge Maddox.
The judge coldly but pleasantly informs him that he is the only suspect in the murder of his wife that morning and that he has the requisite 90 minutes in which to convince “her” otherwise or be electrocuted.
Chris Pratt (Guardians of the Galaxy) spends a good 90 percent of the film attached to that chair and it gives him a chance to show what a good actor he is. He’s come a long way from Parks and Recreation. Rebecca Ferguson (from the Mission Impossible films) is suitably deadpan most of the time as the judge, although she evokes at times the sudden unpredictability of Max Headroom (remember him?)
The film offers cleverness throughout, actually bordering at times on genius. Everything is tech—the kind of day-to-day tech that comes from Apple Watches and those VR glasses, although upgraded a few generations. Chris is allowed access to pretty much everything—phone records, street cams, porch cameras, private files, security footage—all in an effort to prove he didn’t do it, although the Internet has already convinced everyone, including his daughter, that he did.
Another thing Mercy reminds me of is found footage movies, such as The Blair Witch Project. Both we and Chris slowly piece together what actually happened as he watches all footage of recent days from multiple different sources. Without giving away too much, I will say that there are numerous twists right up to the end and that I never came close to guessing them.
To me, though, the most fascinating part of the picture was the developing “relationship” between Chris and the AI judge. What makes a human human, and what makes AI not human? If you have an Alexa, you know that AI can learn, and as desperation sets in, Chris is able to both use the AI to his advantage and at the same time, teach the AI some new things.
The building tension is real and the emotions, although a bit manipulative at times, at least feel real. Mercy is an exciting race against the clock movie that touches on many things that make one think!
Booksteve recommends.
