Timur Bekmanbetov’s Mercy is a mildly entertaining sci-fi suspense flick that halfway works, even with its credibility checks bouncing. Yep, it’s the definition of a “leave your brain at the door” experience - entertaining in patches, but never quite sturdy enough to fully buy into. To its credit though, the film does start with a compelling hook: a future where artificial intelligence is empowered to act as judge, jury, and executioner. There’s plenty of interesting ground there - questions about fairness, moral calculus, and AI’s unnervingly swift ability to reach conclusions. But, despite the intriguing setup, Mercy never figures out how to tell a story worthy of its premise. The plot is riddled with holes large enough for a drone to fly through, character motivations swing wildly, and the internal logic is… let’s say “fluid.” Even Chris Pratt, who usually elevates these types of high-concept thrillers with sheer charm, is stranded - quite literally - for most of the runtime. Confined to a chair for roughly 90% of the film, Pratt gets to crack wise and look concerned, but the movie sidelines everything he typically does well. Part of the constraint comes from the film’s chosen format: another entry in the “screen movie” subgenre, where the entire story unfolds through surveillance feeds, FaceTime windows, drone cameras, and other digital viewpoints. It’s a stylistic swing that occasionally works, especially early on when the tension is building, but it becomes increasingly tedious as the movie goes on. And then there’s the ending. The final act devolves into a series of head-scratching twists and exposition dumps that feel more like frantic patchwork than deliberate storytelling. By the time the credits roll, the only thing you can say with confidence is that Chris Pratt probably enjoyed a very comfortable shoot.