Chris Pratt's Mercy is absurdly stupid AI propaganda

If you believe the apocryphal story, the first victim of an ancient torture device that roasted its captives alive could have been the inventor itself.

Elaborately and pointlessly cruel in every respect, the “brazen bull,” thought to have been designed in ancient Greece, was a large, hollow bronze bull statue with a lockable door. The victim would be trapped inside, after which the device would be positioned over a fire. The unfortunate condemned would then start to feel the walls slowly, inexorably heating up.

As the device's temperature increased, the accompanying screams from its prisoner would be carried through a series of pipes, exiting from the bull's mouth and nostrils, which by then would be pouring steam. The animalistic wail echoing out was said to mimic the cry of a cow.

Similarly, Chris Pratt’s Mercy, out today, may leave you moaning in agony. But the occasionally tortuous, more often bland experience of watching “Minority Report for babies” is not what really connects this pseudo sci-fi to an ancient tale about execution. Instead, it’s an element of irony embedded in the early minutes of the film’s script — and then the meta-irony of it completely abandoning, or simply misunderstanding, the risk it’s talking about in the first place. 

You see, Mercy is a topical, cautionary tale about our own immediate future. In its opening moments, it is August 2029 when Detective Chris Raven (Pratt) wakes up to the dulcet, expositional tones of a commercial rehashing the benefits of the “Mercy Court” — the same court he helped both establish and feed with a steady stream of criminals whom he viewed as little more than human filth. 

That court is the ultra-efficient evolution of jurisprudence, a legal tribunal that deals solely with capital punishment, presided over by an impartial AI judge. It was instituted to help manage an unmanageable wave of crime, one that led to whole swaths of major cities clogged by tent-filled, criminal-run “red zones.”

As we’re informed, it is only by the brave enforcement of the law by quadcopter-riding, drone-surveilling cops that things have been kept in check. Oh, and the deterrent fear instilled by the Mercy Court, whose merciless efficiency is only the first example of painfully on-the-nose cultural commentary.

Unfortunately for Chris, he’s not just receiving an on-the-job refresher. Instead, he’s getting a trial of his own; just a day earlier, his wife Nicole (Annabelle Wallis) was stabbed to death in their home. And given the fact that his daughter Britt (Kylie Rogers), police partner Jaq (Kali Reis) and AA sponsor Rob (Chris Sullivan) have all provided evidence pointing squarely at Chris, he’s found himself as the lead suspect. 

So, like 18 other defendants before him, he’s been locked in a chair designed to deliver a lethal sonic pulse in exactly 90 minutes. The only way out is to prove to the AI-powered Judge Maddox (Rebecca Ferguson) that there’s a less than 92 per cent chance he’s guilty. Given the fact that the last 18 accused were all put to death, the odds aren’t exactly in his favour.

As a set-up, it’s not exactly horrible. Perhaps a little contrived, it still functions as a potential blunt narrative weapon for satire, the kind that sci-fi often employs to make sometimes-incisive, sometimes-spurious commentary on where our society is headed. Ignore the clunky and rushed ending with virtually no logical connection to what came before, and Mercy is almost bearable as a make-dinner-to-this type of movie.

In fact, just dumb down the Black Mirror episode "Crocodile" from 2017 — in which a mind-reading device makes determining criminal guilt as simple as pressing a button — and you’re halfway there. 

So what’s the problem? It's all under the hood. For example, consider "Crocodile" once again. As near-future sci-fi, it is a clear allegory, a pointed criticism of the surveillance state and our misguided tendency to trade our liberty for safety.

To make that point, Black Mirror sets up the tension between what the average person might assume about crime and the complexities of putting those ideas into practice. The belief that judgment-by-technology is fine — since only criminals should have cause to worry — clashes with the reality of focusing cold, inhuman pressure on desperate people. Usually, it leads to more tragedy and pain for everyone. 

Mercy walks gingerly toward a similar contrivance. Setting Chris up as a once-prejudiced cop now trapped by the same uncaring system he helped maintain, it feels obvious where the film wants to go. It’s, on the surface, an almost beat-for-beat remake of the brazen bull story: a tale of an apathetic inventor who, by poetic justice, finds himself at the receiving end of the evil he’d heartlessly intended to dole out to others.