Aside from the fact I left this movie with a Migraine, it was pretty clever.
We'd decided to do a movie night on a Thursday this time and the intention was to watch Iron Lung after, but considering the state of me that just wasn't possible so looks like we're giving it a miss.
However, I'm glad that we opted to see Mercy as despite the fact we did 0 research into the film, knew nothing about it, and it starred Chris Pratt, it was quite enjoyable.
The film follows Detective Raven as he stands accused, strapped to an execution chair, with 90 minutes to prove his innocence to an AI court for the murder of his wife. The AI judge, Maddox, has already formed the guilty verdict based on all the facts provided to her, so it is down to him to change her mind.
Raven proceeds to work the case from his execution chair using all the tech and power that is available to the court as Maddox has a lot of sway. He manages to solve the case in record time, but his entire life comes crumbling down with the verdict, and I wont spoil it any further.
It is interesting to see how AI is presented in this movie. As our limited knowledge of the program is that it continuously learns and adapts, it is presented in the movie as corruptible, which of course is what we knew all along. However, it isn't quite as you think. Raven manages to corrupt the AI system to be more human and therefore it is ultimately for the greater good.
But it certainly brings some home truths about how our technology has advanced and what it can do and perhaps what the future will look like.
I liked the fact that in the grand scheme of things the movie is pretty simple. It was Maddox in a room with some cool CGI/special effects and then Raven in a dark room with some effects. Otherwise it was 2 different house scenes, some street scenes, and a warehouse lot. The set budget must have been relatively small but it would have been the effects which ramped it up. But it was clever, I wasn't holding out much hope but I liked it.
While I don't agree with Pratt a lot on his personal views, I like a few things he is in and I can't cloud the person with the characters. This was a good movie and I'd recommend it to a few like minded people. It's a murder mystery with a technical twist, something to stand out from the crowd.
So with that in mind I'm awarding it an 8/10. It kept me guessing even though I did predict a few things, and it was well executed. A happy enough ending. 100% a stand alone film though, there is no need to revisit the Mercy court.
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