MERCY
Starring: Chris Pratt, Rebecca Ferguson, Kali Reis, Annabelle Wallis, Chris Sullivan, and Kylie Rogers
Director: Timur Bekmambetov
NICK
Director Timur Bekmambetov is known for his screenlife films. There's the good (Searching) and the bad (War of the Worlds). Unfortunately, Mercy falls much closer to the latter. First off, there's the visuals. For a style so tech-heavy, there's a real amateur feel to the way everything looks. Then you have Chris Pratt, who left his charisma at home in an unconvincing, and frankly, rather pedestrian performance. Toss in a bunch of plot holes and gaps in logic, and a perplexing final message (that last line knocked this rating down) and you get a film that may be bad enough to end this screenlife genre.
ADRIANO
If for nothing else, Mercy is as much a January movie as it gets. Relying purely on a Chris Pratt performance isn’t a great idea already, but this hits a career low, as his stoicism once again falls flat. Beyond its poorly directed and awkwardly edited chamber concept, Mercy’s writing is horrible and shoe-horns action for no other reason than to hold audience interest, before dialling the stakes up to a thousand and ruining whatever momentum it could’ve had. And if all that didn’t suck enough, its blatant pro-AI messaging makes this a cinematic failure.
BODE
Timur Bekmambetov has spent much of his filmmaking career building out the screenlife movement, which has yielded some gems like Unfriended, but also some stinkers like 2025’s War of the Worlds. And though Mercy technically doesn’t fit in that category, he’s certainly applied some of those tools to a larger canvas. Unfortunately, whatever promise that concept may have shown is squandered on a script that’s almost too forgiving of AI and the flaws of the justice system, and another performance from Chris Pratt that makes you wish he went back to comedies. It’s a January movie, and that’s not complementary.
