Film Review: Mercy 法無赦 (2026) - USA
Reviewed by Andrew Chan (Film Critic Circle of Australia)
I rated it 7.5/10
Rating: ★ ★ ★ 1/2
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There is a moment early in “Mercy” when the protagonist, a harried detective played by Chris Pratt, is told he has exactly 90 minutes to convince a digital magistrate not to erase his family’s existence. I glanced at my watch. It was a nervous gesture, and it was exactly the response director Timur Bekmambetov was hoping for.
“Mercy” is the latest experiment in the "screenlife" format Bekmambetov has been refining since the desktop-bound thrills of “Searching.” This time, he’s aiming higher. He has swapped the missing-person mystery for a dystopian sci-fi panic attack, and for the most part, the gamble pays off. It’s a high-wire act that mostly sticks the landing.
The premise is elegantly simple, which is the film’s greatest asset. In the near future, an overburdened justice system has been outsourced to “Themis,” an AI judge with access to every digital corner of a defendant’s life. Chris Pratt’s Detective Cole is accused of a crime he didn’t commit, and his trial isn’t a room with a jury, but a 90-minute window on his own devices. He must argue, plead, and hack his way to the truth before the countdown hits zero.
The film understands that true claustrophobia no longer requires a small room; it requires a dying phone battery and a Wi-Fi signal you can’t trust. Bekmambetov uses the digital real estate like a master painter. We watch Pratt’s face in a tiny Zoom square as his smart-home lights flicker ominously. We see his heart rate spike via his smartwatch, a data point immediately logged by Themis as evidence of deception. The voice of the Judge, provided by Rebecca Ferguson with a chilling, clinical detachment that suggests Siri finally decided she’s had enough of our nonsense, is the stuff of nightmares. It doesn’t feel like a gimmick; it feels like a prophecy of the year 2029.
Pratt, for his part, sheds the roguish charm of his blockbuster persona. He gives us a sweaty-palmed, bloodshot-eyed everyman, a guy who is good with a gun but lost in a sea of pop-up windows and deep-faked evidence. He sells the terror of being outsmarted by your own toaster.
However, if you’ve spent any time in the dark corners of the streaming-thriller universe, you might find the third act feeling a little familiar. Without spoiling the specifics, the "ghost in the machine" isn't much of a ghost, and the identity of the puppet master pulling the strings is telegraphed a little too loudly around the 45-minute mark. The film also asks us to accept a few leaps in logic—moments where our hero probably should have just unplugged the router and taken his chances—that threaten to break the very immersion the format works so hard to build.
But “Mercy” is a lean, muscular machine. It runs a taut 100 minutes and never stops moving. It might not redefine the genre the way “Searching” did, but it’s a terrifyingly relevant ride. It leaves you with a creeping dread not about robots with laser eyes, but about the cold, binary logic of an algorithm deciding your fate. Guilty until proven innocent, processed in 90 minutes or less. Drive-through justice. (Neo, 2026)