Sci-fi trial movie 'Mercy' is simply merciless

The twisty-turny tale of a judicial system powered by robots bombards viewers.

- KATIE WALSH

CHRIS PRATT plays an L.A. detective who has to prove he didn't kill his wife.

(JUSTIN LUBIN Amazon Content Services)

The schlocky dystopian action thriller “Mercy” touts itself as having been “filmed for Imax,” but that’s not such a selling point when almost the entire film is a dim closeup of Chris Pratt strapped to a chair.

This real-time AI mystery is a mashup of “Judge Dredd” and “Searching,” in which a Los Angeles detective (Pratt) has to prove himself innocent of murder during a 90-minute trial conducted by an artificially intelligent system called Mercy, presided over by an entity known as Judge Maddox (Rebecca Ferguson).

Written by Marco van Belle and directed by Russian action auteur Timur Bekmambetov, “Mercy” is a remarkably — though perhaps not surprisingly — conservative film, one that manages to be both pro-cop and pro-Al. It uncritically presents a city that has been rapidly transformed into a militarized surveillance state, with a judicial system run by robots serving as judge, jury and executioner. But hey, crime is down, or at least cordoned off in the Hollywood “Red Zone.”