As one-word movie titles go, Mercy sits near the top of the popularity heap. A quick glance at IMDb turns up more than a dozen films with the same title, at least eight of them released since 1995.
That 1995 entry, starring John Rubinstein (forever beloved by me as Broadway’s original Pippin) and Sam Rockwell, is log-lined as: “A couple of people steal the daughter of a famous lawyer. Now they want money to give her back — but it’s not just the money they want. They want revenge.”
Or take a 2023 entry, starring Leah Gibson and friend of MAGA Jon Voight, in which “a doctor and former military officer finds herself in a deadly battle for survival when the Irish mob takes control of the hospital where she works and her son is taken hostage.”
Or how about the Mercy from 2000? In it, Ellen Barkin plays a detective who “investigates a series of sexually gruesome serial murders and becomes embroiled in a world of lesbianism and bondage after she becomes obsessed with one of the victims’ paramours.” (Okay, that one actually sounds interesting.)
Turns out I haven’t seen a single one of those Mercy movies.
Until 2026, that is, when I sat through — endured? — the newest addition to the lot, this one starring Chris Pratt and Rebecca Ferguson. Pratt plays Chris Raven, a police detective in a not-too-distant-future Los Angeles where crime has grown so rampant that authorities have created the Mercy Court. In 90 minutes, a defendant must prove his or her innocence to an A.I. entity (Ferguson) that announces at the outset that it is “judge, jury, and executioner.” Too bad it’s not also named Judy. That might have made things extra salty.
Raven has been accused of murdering his wife before heading off on a drunken binge. He can’t remember anything, because of course he can’t. So he must frantically race the clock — aided by extensive surveillance footage, private phone chats and videos, and whatever else exists in the “municipal cloud,” all of it made available to him, privacy be damned — to prove he didn’t stab to death the woman with whom we quickly learn he had a badly strained marriage.
He’s aided outside the courtroom — a massive black box that transforms when necessary into a “holodeck,” enveloping Raven in thrilling video reenactments (fire! car chases!) — by Jacqueline (Kali Reis), a fellow officer with a quadcopter (don’t ask). The two encounter so many red herrings they could pack them in a tin and sell them for $1.99.
It would be (ahem) merciless of me to spoil anything beyond the basic setup, but director Timur Bekmambetov (Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter) does his damndest to juice the film’s visuals with action set pieces meant to justify the cost of your IMAX 3D ticket.
The overall concept feels like a dumbed-down episode of Black Mirror, as a cold, clinical “female” A.I. judge gradually warms to Raven and his plight. Perhaps it’s his chiseled jaw.
And that’s a major issue with Mercy: it needed a much better script than the instantly forgettable one supplied by writer Marco van Belle. The film gestures toward weighty ideas — mostly cautionary ones about artificial intelligence — but never gets past the shooting-fish-in-a-barrel stage. It quickly abandons what could have been an intimate, nerve-wracking interplay between an A.I. that doesn’t “make mistakes” and a desperate human in favor of overcooked action sprawl.
It’s next to impossible to care about the characters. Ferguson, who is the best thing about the movie, likely collected a nice paycheck for a few days of work, much of it spent reading lines and occasionally cocking her head — sometimes quizzically, sometimes admonishingly.
As for Pratt, he’s stuck in a pretty thankless role, strapped to a chair for much of the film and forced to emote by straining his neck muscles to the point of bursting. Still, he remains an inoffensive presence, buoyed by enough leftover goodwill from his Guardians of the Galaxy days that we can look the other way and forgive the Pratt fall.
Mercy (★★☆☆☆) is rated R and playing in theaters nationwide. Visit www.fandango.com.
The blonde, busty housekeeper Millie portrayed by Sydney Sweeney in The Housemaid brushes off several early signs that all is not as it appears inside the posh Long Island home of the Winchesters, where she has just been hired.
Some of the signs are so glaring that they play like punchlines. "Welcome, Millie. Here's your room in the attic, with just one window waaaay up there that doesn't open, and a door that locks from the outside. And be as loud as you want, because no one can hear you all the way downstairs."
Adapting Freida McFadden's bestselling 2022 novel -- the first in a series of three Housemaid books, so far -- director Paul Feig and screenwriter Rebecca Sonnenshine inject winking humor into a setup bristling with dread and paranoia. In concept, we're watching a psychological thriller, but the tongue-in-cheek tone is what usually prevails.
In 2015, it all seemed to be a novel concept. That's the year Jordan Harrison's Pulitzer Prize-nominated Marjorie Prime premiered Off-Broadway. Certainly, artificial intelligence had been developed, but in the ten years since, its sophistication and abilities have reached levels that are both beneficial and ethically questionable. Now, the piece has returned, this time on Broadway.
The use of AI rests at the center of Harrison's drama about Marjorie (June Squibb), an octogenarian who lives with her daughter, Tess (Cynthia Nixon), and her son-in-law Jon (Danny Burstein). Christopher Lowell rounds out the cast as Walter, a computerized version of Marjorie's deceased husband, known as a "Prime." With short-term memory loss and slight dementia plaguing Marjorie, the robotic form of her late spouse reappears in his thirties and relays information provided to him by Jon and Tess.
People are saying 2025 was a very good year for movies, and we'd agree. In terms of artistic quality -- if not domestic box office, which will finish about half a billion dollars down from last year -- this year gave audiences a varied bounty of films built on strong concepts, mesmerizing performances, and compelling visions of our hectic modern times.
If these cinematic gems share any quality, it's a certain relentlessness that also characterizes life right now. We might have seen in 2025 a good share of quiet, contemplative dramas like The History of Sound and Train Dreams, but the films that dominate this Top Ten tend to reflect the present mood of profound disquiet.
These are challenging times for news organizations. And yet it’s crucial we stay active and provide vital resources and information to both our local readers and the world. So won’t you please take a moment and consider supporting Metro Weekly with a membership? For as little as $5 a month, you can help ensure Metro Weekly magazine and MetroWeekly.com remain free, viable resources as we provide the best, most diverse, culturally-resonant LGBTQ coverage in both the D.C. region and around the world. Memberships come with exclusive perks and discounts, your own personal digital delivery of each week’s magazine (and an archive), access to our Member's Lounge when it launches this fall, and exclusive members-only items like Metro Weekly Membership Mugs and Tote Bags! Check out all our membership levels here and please join us today!
You must be logged in to post a comment.