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<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\u201cMercy\u201d was the #1 movie at the box office on a weekend where the weather showed little in the way of mercy to much of the country. Hope you\u2019re all safe out there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As if the weather weren\u2019t enough of a disadvantage, \u201cMercy\u201d is saddled with one of the stupidest cinematic premises I\u2019ve ever seen. It takes place in a dystopian future where murder trials take the form of \u201cMercy trials,\u201d suspects being strapped unsupervised to a chair in a tech-filled, but otherwise empty room and given 90 minutes to prove their innocence to an A.I. judge. If they can\u2019t establish a reasonable doubt within the time limit, they\u2019re executed on the spot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To give the suspects a fighting chance, tech is at their disposal to examine the crime scene, check security cameras, call witnesses, look at evidence like strangers\u2019 personal financial records, and so on, all in the name of making the system think that they are less than 92% guilty. But emotional pleas do no good, the way they might with a human jury. Also, there are no lawyers to navigate (some would say \u201cmanipulate\u201d) the justice system. No suspect given this kind of trial has ever been found not guilty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Detective Chris Raven (Chris Pratt), a major proponent of the Mercy system, awakens one day to finds himself strapped to a chair for a Mercy trial. On a screen, Judge Maddox (Rebecca Ferguson) informs him that he\u2019s the prime suspect in the murder of his wife (Annabelle Wallis). His probability of guilt is deemed to be 96.7%. If he wants to avoid being\u2026 the movie never says, but I\u2019m guessing electrocuted, he\u2019d better get cracking on getting that number down below 92%. Oh, and he suffered a brain injury when he was arrested, so he doesn\u2019t remember anything about the morning of the murder \u2013 including whether or not he did it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Chris goes about uncovering the truth. He knows that he wasn\u2019t always the best husband, struggling with anger and alcoholism, but he couldn\u2019t have done it\u2026 in the emotional sense. In the literal sense, maybe. He doesn\u2019t get much help from friends and family, like his less-angelic-than-he-thought daughter (Kylie Rogers), his sponsor (Chris Sullivan), or his partner (Kali Reis), who are seemingly of the attitude that they want to help him, but the evidence isn\u2019t looking good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He uncovers layers upon layers of secrets: his wife may have been having an affair with a chef (Jeff Pierre), she may have been involved with illegal drug manufacturing with her co-worker (Rafi Gavron), and there may be a conspiracy to unleash untold terror. And he may have to come to the conclusion that the Mercy system itself may not be as perfect as he previously thought. Who would have thought that putting a murder trial in the hands of a judge that can simply be unplugged might have flaws?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cMercy\u201d is one of those movies that wants to warn us about the dangers of A.I., that this is where society is headed if we entrust in it too much. Except no, we\u2019re not. A.I. is indeed creeping its way into all facets of life, including the justice system, and there are dangers that come along with it, but we\u2019re a million miles from this strapped-to-a-chair-with-no-humans-around nonsense. The whole thing is ridiculous. It\u2019s so ridiculous, in fact, that it warrants being seen by people who like ridiculous movies. This movie gets my rare \u201cB-minus-minus\u201d rating, reserved for movies that I would never recommend in the traditional sense, but do make me shake my head and chucklingly say, \u201cYou gotta see this.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Grade: B- –<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cMercy\u201d is rated PG-13 for violence, bloody images, some strong language, drug content and teen smoking. Its running time is 100 minutes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Bob Garver \u201cMercy\u201d was the #1 movie at the box office on a weekend where the weather showed little in the way of mercy to much of the… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":61746,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"13","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":true,"token":"eyJpbWciOiJodHRwczpcL1wvaTAud3AuY29tXC9sYWtlbGFuZGdhemV0dGUuaW5mb1wvbmV3c1wvd3AtY29udGVudFwvdXBsb2Fkc1wvMjAyNlwvMDFcL2ltYWdlLTIwMjYtMDEtMjZUMTk1NDUwLjM1NS53ZWJwP2ZpdD02OTElMkMxMDI0JnNzbD0xIiwidHh0IjoiTW92aWUgUmV2aWV3ICYjODIxMTsgTWVyY3kiLCJ0ZW1wbGF0ZSI6ImhpZ2h3YXkiLCJmb250IjoiIiwiYmxvZ19pZCI6MTYzMDQwNjYxfQ.YmLIzrshLummnv4oYkMPpuurDBLhhvSnPQYSktYPIzQMQ"},"version":2,"attached_media":[{"id":61746,"url":"http:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/image-2026-01-26T195450.355.webp","type":"image\/png"}]},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[13],"tags":[13362],"class_list":["post-61745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-movie-review-mercy"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61745","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61745"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61745\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61747,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61745\/revisions\/61747"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61746"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}