Hello from Paris, France, where I plan to suffer beautifully from TB in a garret apartment before heading south to take in the sea airs of Cannes. I’ll get into all the highfalutin cinema of that festival soon enough, but for now I thought I’d share some thoughts on a few perhaps lower-brow titles I’ve seen recently. Yes, it’s a review of what I watched on the plane. (For the AvGeeks: I was on Delta.)

Mercy (2026)

Nothing says “trip to France” quite like a Chris Pratt movie about a wrongfully accused cop using the full surveillance apparatus of a dystopian America to exonerate himself. That is indeed the premise of this garish thriller, which largely uses the “screenlife” narrative technique pioneered by the film’s director, Timur Bekmambetov. In this case, Pratt’s Detective Chris Raven (sure) is strapped to a chair and put before an AI judge (named Maddox, played by Rebecca Ferguson) to plead his case for about an hour before he is summarily executed. He must use bodycam footage, stuff scraped from social media, and various other video feeds to track down the identity of his wife’s killer. 

Bekmambetov used this multi-screen format much more successfully in the fun, twisty 2018 movie Searching. (The worst twist? Debra Messing is in it.) Here, the technique does the (accidental?) work of suggesting that having cameras everywhere that are linked to systems widely available to law enforcement might be a pretty handy thing indeed—should you find yourself accused of killing Annabelle Wallis, anyway. The movie is critiquing the AI trial part of its nightmarish future, not the surveillance stuff, which does not go down great. 

It’s strange that Pratt who, like it or not, did become famous for a certain shaggy, rakish charm here deadens that signature appeal into nothing. He’s has no levels beyond stern and slightly panicked the entire time; there’s barely an ounce of humor to be found, other than the most canned kind of tough-guy sarcasm. He mostly sits there in that chair saying, “Computer, load up Celery Man, please,” while Ferguson, such a commanding actor in her good roles, responds to him robotically. What a waste of her.  

There’s the vaguest suggestion toward the end of the film that Maddox might not be an AI at all, which I thought would be a neat surprise. But, no. The movie isn’t really interested in doing anything more shocking than revealing that the killer was actually much closer to Detective Chris Raven than he thought—and that a case from the past is not as closed as he assumed. Mercy isn’t completely dull, but it was not the best company as my plane jostled mightily through rough turbulence over Newfoundland. (And I’m not exaggerating: my kindly gay flight attendant said it’s the worst turbulence he’s experienced in a long time.) I really could only recommend this movie if you’re whiskey-hungover on the rainiest Sunday possible. But even then, whatever delivery food you order will probably be more exciting. Just remember to tip! And turn off your fucking Ring cam.