Majuro There is a moment in Mercy, Amazon’s new sci-fi thriller, when Chris Pratt sits strapped to a chair while an AI judge decides whether to execute him for murdering his wife.
You will wish she had ordered yours, so you would not have to watch this steaming pile of suck.
Pratt, who parlayed lovable goofball Andy Dwyer on Parks and Recreation into a career as Hollywood’s most dependable leading man, has now found his ceiling. It is a chair, in a courtroom, arguing with a computer for 90 minutes while the audience argues with itself about whether to finish the movie or reorganize a sock drawer.
The premise is not without promise. In the near future, an AI judge named Maddox, played by Rebecca Ferguson, gives defendants 90 minutes to prove their innocence or face execution. It is Minority Report filtered through the brain of someone who has seen Minority Report but did not understand it.
Director Timur Bekmambetov is the auteur responsible for both this film and last year’s War of the Worlds, in which Ice Cube saved humanity from alien invasion with the help of Amazon same-day delivery. That sentence is not a joke. That sentence is a plot summary.
Bekmambetov has now made two films for Amazon MGM Studios, and in both of them Amazon products function as heroes. In War of the Worlds, it was the logistics infrastructure. In Mercy, it is Ring doorbell cameras, which appear so often and so lovingly that you half expect them to have their own trailer. Amazon’s home surveillance system as the instrument of justice is particularly rich given that Ring has partnered with AI companies that share footage with law enforcement agencies including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
But politics aside, Mercy fails on the most basic level. It is boring. Pratt sits. The AI talks. Evidence appears on screens. More screens. All the screens. The entire film is essentially a man arguing with a laptop, which most of us do for free.
The movie earned 25 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. It grossed $54 million worldwide against a $60 million budget, which means Amazon lost money making a commercial for Amazon.
There is a lesson in there somewhere. Amazon just doesn’t seem interested in delivering it.
