A film Review by Cliff Homewood
You may have seen the trailer for Mercy, it looked generic. A Judge Dredd sort of thing where the Judge is Jury and Executioner. Chris Pratt seems to make a living out of generic SF. But Mercy is a good film, just not the film advertised. A police procedural with a thin veneer of SF over it. Reminiscent of other films like Outland – watch Sean Connery play golf on the moon. Or TV like Firefly – a western in space – it even had an episode on cattle ranching. Star Cops is another – Police in Spaace.
Everything’s the same in the future except for the things that aren’t. Which means it must be set in the near future, yet the power of the judge in this and the societal change required doesn’t seem realistic. Judge Dredd solved it by having a nuclear war throw the old out. Having a judge-jury-executioner with access to everything, and no qualms about sharing it, seems unlikely but the way Trump is dismantling America does make one wonder what else is possible. I’m aware it’s also the way the wild west of the internet and AI is heading.
Director Timur Bekmambetov (Wanted, Night Watch trilogy) designed the film to be seen in 3d, “That 3D experience will give you a kind of real-life sense of what Chris is experiencing in the chair, because those screens will not just come at you in a 2D way. They’ll almost look like they’re coming at you out of the motion picture screen into the audience.”
Cineworld was the only local cinema showing it in 3D and there was also 4DX. It was the first 4DX film I’ve seen where it enhanced instead of distracted. Normally you get jerkily thrown around in your seats which doesn’t fit seamlessly as the screen retains its fixed angle viewpoint, unless the screen moved with you, then you would retain the right viewing angle. Mercy did some lovely subtle stuff like lurch you down when the trial wasn’t going well, so you get that sinking feeling in your stomach. Still not sold though as an explosion gave me backache!
I’m not sure that the 3D significantly made it better, don’t want to disagree with director, it looked prettier, but the court case was a framing device. The whole film is the court case near enough. I can see why Chris Pratt took the role, as a lot of the film is just close ups of him or the judge. Within this framing device where he has 90 mins to prove his innocence, he pulls up video files of what’s happened to analyse. This is where the director felt 3D was required, as you have the depth of the person watching the footage against the footage in the window.
Do you want to see the future? A light Spoiler, or Spoo, if you will
At one point, when the judge is doing her best Max Headroom impression, he says, “put a pin in it and we’ll come back to this” but they never do. That’s because it’s designed as a thriller not a SF film. A decent SF would fully flesh out how society got to this state (even if it’s just dropping a bomb to wipe out the old one), this hints at it, but it was never fully realised to my satisfaction. That’s because the scene has done its job as a thriller; seeding mystery.
I’ve finished my Spoo
As the film is the court case, which has a clock counting down the remaining time of the 90 mins he has to prove his innocence, it’s the only film I can think of that tells you how long you have left throughout the running time.
An emotionally satisfying film, I had a slight dissatisfaction with the ending intellectually. It didn’t resolve everything to my satisfaction but I imagine it does for most. Worth seeing.