Mercy Review: Minority Report For Dummies

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I recently rewatched Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report, and I’m reminded how brilliant it is. It’s a truly impressive science fiction film and easily one of the highlights of Spielberg’s career. Based on a story by a legendary author, the movie is intelligent, exciting, and emotionally powerful. It imagines a new kind of legal system where crimes are stopped before they happen, thanks to three people who can see the future.

Mercy

Here are the details for the movie: It will be released on January 23, 2026, and is directed by Timur Bekmambetov. The screenplay is by Marco van Belle, and the film stars Chris Pratt, Rebecca Ferguson, Annabelle Wallis, Kylie Rogers, Kali Reis, and Chris Sullivan. It’s rated PG-13 for violence, disturbing imagery, strong language, drug references, and teen smoking, and has a runtime of 100 minutes.

The 2002 film centers around a world transformed by the discovery of individuals who can foresee the future. Society tries to adapt by creating a special police unit that arrests potential murderers before they commit crimes. This system seems perfect at first, but it’s soon revealed to be imperfect and open to manipulation, putting the main character in danger.

I’m highlighting this popular movie from 2006 because Timur Bekmambetov’s Mercy clearly tries to emulate it. The new film, written by Marco van Belle, tries to connect the idea of predicting crimes with today’s artificial intelligence. It envisions a legal process built around this technology, focusing on a character who initially believes in the system until he’s negatively affected by it. Unfortunately, the core concept is illogical, and since the entire movie depends on it, the result is a confusing and ultimately failed film.

While the film ambitiously attempts to explore the risks of artificial intelligence using a unique, real-time screenlife format, it ultimately falls flat. Despite some visually impressive moments, the story is fundamentally flawed, preventing it from being engaging, thought-provoking, or enjoyable. It’s a bold effort, but feels like a January release destined to be quickly forgotten.

Chris Pratt plays Chris Raven, a Los Angeles police officer who finds himself unexpectedly chained to a chair, facing a digital judge named Judge Maddox (Rebecca Ferguson). He’s the nineteenth person to be put on trial in the Mercy Court, a fact made even stranger by the fact that he previously arrested the very first person to be judged by this A.I. system a few years earlier.

Okay, so the setup is insane. I’m thrown into this world where I’m instantly considered guilty, and they tell me there’s a 97.5% chance I killed my wife earlier that day. But here’s the catch: I have 90 minutes to prove them wrong, to get that ‘certainty’ level down to 92% or I’m executed. They give me access to everything – every phone, computer, camera in the city – basically all the evidence, hoping I can find something, anything, to prove my innocence and find the real killer. It’s a total race against time and a really messed up situation.

Simply put, this movie makes no sense.

The movie Mercy aims to be a warning about the risks of relying too much on artificial intelligence, especially in areas like the legal system. It’s set in 2029, suggesting a near-future scenario. However, the film’s message is weakened by its weak plot. While the concept of a defendant facing a digital judge is intriguing, the story lacks substance. This lack of depth becomes increasingly apparent as the plot unfolds, ultimately damaging the film’s interesting premise.

Okay, so the movie throws you right into a really sticky situation: the main character, Chris, is immediately suspected of murdering his wife. The evidence seems damning – a fight caught on camera, and he’s found heavily intoxicated right after it happened. Everyone’s ready to hit him with the death penalty. But then, something strange happens. Chris starts doing what should have been basic police investigation – things like looking for other suspects with a reason and the chance to have done it. And honestly, that’s where the movie lost me. The clues he finds, and the way the mystery unfolds, are so incredibly predictable and straightforward. It’s not that the plot is bad, it’s that the ‘complex’ deductions the movie seems to think it’s making are just… obvious. It’s baffling how much weight the film gives to these incredibly basic revelations.

While the film shows how computers could make poor decisions when evaluating crimes, it explains this with very basic ideas and lacks a complex storyline. As a result, Mercy unfortunately becomes less intelligent and more simplistic as it progresses.

Mercy tries new things with screenlife filmmaking, but they don’t quite work as they should.

I’m a big fan of the ‘screenlife’ style of filmmaking – movies like Open Windows, the Unfriended series, and Searching and Missing really capture how we experience the digital world. Mercy tries to fit into this style, but doesn’t quite succeed. It’s cool to see the main character, Chris, using things like video calls and online searches to figure out what happened to his wife, but the sci-fi elements make it feel less realistic and relatable than other films in this format. There’s also a plot hole: if all the proof needed to clear Chris’s name is available online, why does the AI still consider him guilty?

Ultimately, Mercy relies heavily on its unique presentation – it’s filmed entirely as if happening live on a computer screen – and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Many successful movies are known for trying something new. However, in this case, those interesting techniques are built on a weak story, and the film actually gets worse as it goes on. Unless someone is physically forcing you to watch it, it’s best to skip this one.

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2026-01-21 22:16