Mercy is a Technological Rollercoaster Ride Eerily Close to Reality

There have been many instances where I have caught Alexa spying on my conversations or reciting something stated when she was believed to be not operational.  Imagine having an electronic convenience that could one day betray you without knowledge or consent. This is the world we are living in and it could possibly become worse

Imagine you awaken to find yourself strapped into a chair, face to face with a judge who informs you that you’ve been accused of murder— and unless you can exonerate yourself in 90 minutes, you’ll be executed instantly. You have access to every bit of camera footage on the web to prove your case, and you can use that to convince the judge of your innocence. Yet all of that private and public surveillance footage could put you closer to a guilty verdict.

It’s 2029, and Det. Chris Raven (Chris Pratt) wakes up in that reality. The judge he’s in front of is an AI he once championed personified as a human, Judge Maddox (Rebeca Ferguson). Raven is a Los Angeles police detective accused of murdering his wife, Nicole (Annabelle Wallis), and as he tries to find scraps of doubt amongst almost 24/7 footage of himself, Maddox decides if the alibis he’s grasping at are either helpful or harmful to his case. Raven needs to get down to a 92 percent probability of guilt…yet the closer he creeps up to 98 percent guilt, the more likely it is he’ll be executed on the spot in what is known as the Mercy Chair.

The judge provides police body cams, doorbell cams, cellphone images, social media accounts, and public surveillance cameras to counter Raven’s arguments for his innocence. Every move Raven has made was stored in the cloud, accessible to a legal system that’s become reliant on AI to process suspected criminals in an increasingly violent society.  It’s a nightmare scenario and in the exciting, revolutionary, visually dynamic action thriller “Mercy,” it takes on future-world overtones as Artificial Intelligence serves as judge, jury and executioner. There are many times where this film is eerily similar to the Tom Cruise film “Minority Report.”  The only difference is instead of attempting to prevent a crime from happening, one has to prevent themselves from being permanently terminated based on teh fats and footage reviewed.

Needless to say I was completely stressed out and walked away disturbed that this could very well be the future we are staring into through a cinematic lens. Loved that Kali Reis and Chris Sullivan turned out to be the villains as the story unfolds, as both have often inhabited roles where they are the good guys.  How it all shakes out is absolutely not what you see coming and I was there for all of it.

Mercy is art imitating life in unimaginable ways, but a rollercoaster ride of epic proportions keeping audiences on their toes.