Trucker Man Watches: Mercy

"Minority Report" turned sideways

Movies come in seasons. Summer is the era of blockbusters, and the run from November through December is either for family-friendly cash-grabs or Oscar bait. Spring is where you drop a movie that you expect to do well but you don’t want to put it up against the summer titans, and then there are a few months in between everything else where the offerings are dicey.

January, February, August, and September fit this bill for me. Everyone is recovering from the holidays or their summer vacations, so spending money at the movies is a low priority. Thus, a release in this span is oft-overlooked.

Mercy, starring Chris Pratt and Rebecca Ferguson, was this year’s January sacrifice: a movie that probably suffered from its release schedule and could have had a better run of things if it had been floated into April. (Not March, it looks like Project Hail Mary is sweeping up on that front, and I still need to get out and see it. I’m hearing wonderful things.)

My immediate thought after seeing a trailer last fall was “This is basically Minority Report.” A cop designs a revolutionary new system to fight crime, it’s borderline unconstitutional, but it gets statistically desirable results, and people kind of want that so they just roll with it. Everything is good until the system’s architect finds himself in the crosshairs, and he has ninety minutes to prove he’s not guilty or he’s executed.

Bonus points: he’s accused of murdering his wife.

Bonus bonus points: the judge, jury, and executioner in this system is an A.I.

Casting Call

Before I even get into the plot twists and stuff, I want to highlight the performances. Chris Pratt spends 90% of his screen time strapped to a chair, and he has to convincingly portray a whole range of very difficult emotions in a short span of time. Without being able to physically move, that’s saying something. He has really grown as an actor since his early days on teen dramas and sitcoms.

Rebecca Ferguson also had a hard challenge: she spent all of her time staring straight at a camera and trying not to show emotion, even though there were times when the A.I. got confused and started to grapple with its own internal logic. I can’t remember the first thing I ever saw her in, probably one of the Mission: Impossible films, and she’s always been an alluring watch, but between this role and her interpretation of Lady Jessica in Dune, I really like her skillset.

There aren’t many other actors in this boat that I recognize, and after digging around the IMDB page, I think it was a lower-budget project for Amazon/MGM that was probably destined to be a streaming movie. If that’s the case, then a January release makes more sense: get some limited distribution, get a little bit of theater money, then make whatever you were going to make off of it from Prime, where Chris Pratt is their golden boy anyway.

I only mention that because after watching it this weekend, I kind of thought it would have been a good movie to see in theaters. The spectacle matched the story.

And what is the story?

Chris Pratt plays a guy named Chris…Raven, a jaded LAPD detective with a drinking problem. He wakes up in the Mercy Court, which he helped design and bring to life. He’s accused of brutally murdering his wife just a few hours ago. He doesn’t remember much of what happened right before he woke up in the chair.

An A.I. judge (Ferguson) will give him access to all of the surveillance data (and other relevant information) that he wants in order to lower his guilt probability. He has 90 minutes to succeed before he’s automatically executed. As Raven sorts through the evidence, we learn more about his life and career: his partner was killed a few years ago during a traffic stop, and the killer got away with it through the courts. This drove Raven to endorse the Mercy program, which has successfully executed 18 defendants so far. To cope with the loss of his partner he became an alcoholic, then he went to A.A., but he fell off the wagon about a year ago.

There are several incidents and behavioral patterns in his history to suggest he did what he’s accused of, but he knows that he didn’t, and he needs to figure out what’s really going on. I’ll spare any further divulgence because it’s worth watching at speed in order to see how it plays out. There are a few predictable beats for a procedural story, including an initial suspect who alibis out, some misdirects, and some gut-punchers, and they’re delivered refreshingly well. Even the final antagonist was a surprise when all was said and done.

Overall it’s the best kind of thriller: one that could easily happen in our world (and probably will at some point, with the assumption that the governments in southern California will ever demonstrate the political will to crack down on crime). And it’s a breath of fresh air to get a story dealing with a Current Issue without Current Day-isms breaking the immersive effect of the storytelling.

Politics aren’t present here. Nothing feels forced, and there’s a beat at the end that’ll have you sitting up in your chair saying “Whoa, we are back, boys!”

So give it a watch, it’s surely better than its release window would imply.

Contents:

Many-much cases of Chris(tian) Pratt taking the good Lord’s name in vain, and other profanity throughout. One particular F-bomb in the first half-hour or so. Instances to and references of drug abuse, alcoholism, police violence, criminal violence, explosions, and such.