Mercy is Chris Pratt’s newest movie. The film follows Detective Chris Raven (Pratt) as he wakes up in a futuristic courthouse, and an AI judge (Rebecca Ferguson) explains to Chris Raven that he is on trial for the murder of his wife. He has 90 minutes to prove his innocence, or he will be executed instantly.
Courtesy of Mercy film (2026), Chris Pratt
Released January 23rd, 2026, this Sci-fi thriller is directed by Timur Bekmambetov and written by Marco Van Belle. The film was distributed by Amazon, MGM Studios, and has a run time of 1 hour and 40 minutes.
From the moment I saw the first trailer for this film, I knew I wanted to go see it. After its release weekend, I kept seeing negative reviews of the movie, with Rotten Tomatoes giving it a 24% on the Tomatometer.
I was intrigued to watch it for myself and write a review from the perspective of someone who went into this movie pretty blindly, other than watching the trailer once. Warning: Spoilers Ahead!
Courtesy of Mercy film (2026) Rebecca Ferguson
Cons
Ten minutes in, I thought I had made a mistake by coming to see this movie. I was wondering where this whole movie was going after the fifteen-second introduction to the Mercy Court System, which is probably the best part of the movie until you start getting into the plot.
Characters: The beginning of the movie was pretty bland. I’m not going to sugarcoat it. The script and lines seemed redundant, and you’re introduced to a lot of characters right off the bat with no real reason to remember any of them.
The longer you watch the movie, the more you learn that these characters have so much deep history, but you aren’t really given the chance to experience it or come to know it, except for Rey and Chris’s bond through the police department.
Unless the director was on a time crunch to make this movie fast-paced, I would have liked there to be rich backstories about what life was like when Rey died for Chris, when Chris got into drinking, and when Chris chose Rob as his sponsor.
The film rushes past these pivotal moments that the movie is truly built upon. And we aren’t given much time to really feel for these characters because we are so new to meeting them all.
Plot Holes: At the beginning of the film, when Pratt is going through his teenage daughter, Britt’s, phone via Judge Maddox, we learn that she has a “spam” social media account and is talking to a guy that Chris doesn’t recognize.
We never see this guy again or get answers about who he was. We know that, through this exchange, Chris finds that there was someone in the house at the time. But it seems like a weak idea that this guy was thrown into the movie for no actual plot. This could have been easily avoided if Britt had been talking to a friend or recording herself. Throwing the guy in there with no further explanation of who he was to Britt after Chris made a big deal out of it after he found out was useless.
Filming: I was not expecting the movie to be solely based on body-cam footage, phone and computer screens, and to be carried through the media so much. I was honestly getting a little tired of it. I wished they had done more “real life”-looking camera footage, because it got annoying looking through pixelated, off-color footage for long stretches when you weren’t directly looking at Chris Pratt’s face.
Towards the end of the movie, we saw a lot more of the real world, not through a device.
Futuristic? I also found it strange that, though this movie was supposed to be set in the near future, the only thing futuristic was Jaq’s flying police-helicopter thing. It made the movie look really cheesy, and they really should have left that bit out and just used a helicopter or drone to replace those scenes.
The Ending: It was so aburupt with no fulfilling ending. Bad guys lose, good guys win, cut to black, and that was it. I even looked up whether there was an after-credits scene, hoping we would get a proper ending, but it was just credits.
Pros
Acting: Pratt’s acting is superb in this film; his facial expressions and reactions upon waking up in the Mercy Court, something he designed, are beautifully done.
To be honest, I haven’t been a huge fan of Pratt after the Jurassic World franchise that went on for far too long. I thought Chris’s acting was pretty mediocre after Jurassic World (2015). I also got a bad taste in my mouth after it seemed like Pratt was going from Jurassic World to Super Mario to Garfield.
I absolutely loved the actors chosen for this movie; I thought they all did an exceptional job. Ferguson, who plays the role of Judge Maddox, really brought the AI judge to life, even though stuck behind a screen from the chest up for almost the entirety of the movie. I’m not bagging on it, just giving mad props to Rebecca, who totally made this character shine.
AI: I didn’t think I would like AI movies as much as I did. I really liked the writer's idea of an AI judge and how, in the future, this is how the court system works. It’s new and refreshing, something that hasn’t been completely done before.
Throughout the movie, I think it teaches this generation a lot about AI. For starters, everything we do on our phones and computers leaves a digital footprint - no matter if we think we have deleted it or kept it private. Secondly, we can humanize robots by talking to ChatGPT, Gemini, and other forms of AI.
These servers learn from what we put into them. They are constantly taking notes on what we say to them, ask of them, and how much we use them.
I thought humanizing AI was something that needed to be said, but this was presented in such an articulate, profound, yet subtle way that it just felt light.
Recommend: I definitely would recommend this movie for people who like Chris Pratt, Sci-fi, or thrillers, hey, maybe even all of the above. It was a really entertaining film that picked up speed a little less than halfway in.
The storyline, though not executed as well as it could be, is really strong and a really good time for where we are in our lives. I wouldn’t say that this is the greatest movie ever, but it’s a good movie to watch.