Mercy is set in 2029, and plays an old trope of life being a dystopian and lawless society, with the US government cracking down, and being all “might is right”. Oh wait…
In the future, where cops ride hoverbikes and juries are no longer required – something being mooted in the UK, even though it wouldn’t reduce the backlog to a great deal, given how few cases could covered by it – and if you’ve been accused of a crime that you may or may not have committed, you’ll be brought before an AI judge – Judge Maddox (Rebecca Ferguson – Dune Part Two) – in this case, and have just 90 minutes to prove your innocence, whilst strapped into a chair.
So, yes, you’ve paid the £5 IMAX supplement to mostly watch a man sat in a chair… while you’re sat in a chair. So, yes, the accused, Chris Raven (Chris Pratt – The Electric State) – who may or may not have bumped off his missus, spends almost the entire length of the 100-minute movie parked on his butt, as he taps away on a little keypad, reviewing all the evidence – including more CCTV footage being available than every city in the world, except Manchester – and/or shouts at Ms Ferguson in the virtual world.
Still, thankfully, this AI bot doesn’t put Chris Pratt in a bikini!
The real problem for Raven, apart from imminment death, is that he started the Mercy program in the first place, and now is stuck in it. Ooh, how the turns have tabled!
His guilt is initially calculated at 97.5%, but he has to get it down to 92%, in order to introduce some element of doubt into his arrest.
And if he ever gets free, will he sentence his 16-year-old daughter, Britt (Kylie Rogers), to the same process for the crime of having an Instagram account where she puts pronouns in her bio?
Mercy doesn’t exactly have the most complex plotting in a film, but is still carried out well enough to be enjoyable, gave me quite a few inadvertent big laughs, and doesn’t deserve to bomb faster than an ICE agent’s excuses, given that it does have some decent drama, as well as a few interesting looks at AI.
In fact, it feels like it would make a good videogame chapter, as there’s some bodycam scenes that look like a crime scene being terraformed, yet sort-of scan it in a 3D-style (albeit in 2D), and makes the film feel like something from Detroit: Become Human.
As for 3D, there are 3D versions of this film knocking around, but in the UK, this only extends to 4DX at Cineworld, which generally has 2.39:1 screens for that, and you’ll suffer the problem listed below. For everyone else, it’s in 2D, but reportedly, the 3D is barely used, and only appears to be for elements of Raven’s screen that’s placed in front of him. After all, need I remind you, he’s sat in a chair the whole time!
However, Mercy has a far bigger mystery to solve… Why was this film shot in the weird aspect ratio of 2.20:1? That’s the sort of ratio used in the ’60s and ’70s when they shot on 70mm, and for some reason, it didn’t quite extended to 2.39:1, the latter of which is the traditional aspect ratio used by most cinema screens in the UK.
Thus, the smart move for movie studios would be to issue the film within a 2.39:1 container – with slight black bars left and right – and instruct the cinema to just treat as a standard 2.39:1 film. That way, it just about fills the screen.
Unfortunately, Sony Pictures Entertainment and Amazon MGM Studios are complete and utter fuckwits, because they’ve just put it out within a standard 1.85:1 container, so when it’s shown on a 2.39:1 screen, it’s windowboxed to within an inch of its life, and looks like shit.
Then again, if you watch this in IMAX, it opens up to the digital IMAX aspect ratio of 1.90:1 for 62 mins – so, almost 2/3 of its running time. Given that the bodycam footage of cops including his partner, Jaq Diallo (Kali Reis), is clearly framed for 1.90:1, why doens’t the whole film stay like that?! There’s absolutely zero reason for it to change!
For the record, the 2.20:1 content is basically the middle third of the film, before it quickly switches back to 1.90:1.
Given that 1.90:1 is very close to 1.85:1, and with a lot of cinema screens just slightly overscanning, it’ll most likely look like it fits the top and bottom of the screen, anyway, whereas being 2.20:1 throughout just looks like shit. In fact, after seeing Mercy in IMAX, I discreetly popped by the regular screen that was playing it, and yep, windowboxed on a 2.39:1 screen (GAH!) but I am following this up with the studios, to ask them why they didn’t issue it within a 2.39:1 container. For now, in this case, I can’t blame Odeon.
NOTE: There are no mid- nor post-credit scenes.
Mercy is in cinemas now, but isn’t yet available to pre-order on Blu-ray or DVD. However, once announced, it will appear on the New DVD Blu-ray 3D and 4K releases UK list.
Detailed specs:
Cert: 
Running time: 100 minutes
Release date: January 22nd 2026
Studio: Amazon MGM Studios
Aspect ratio: 1.90:1 (IMAX version, 62 mins), 2.20:1 (Blackmagic URSA Cine 12K)
Rating: 7/10
Director: Timur Bekmambetov
Producers: Robert Amidon, Timur Bekmambetov, Majd Nassif, Charles Roven
Screenplay: Marco van Belle
Music: Ramin Djawadi
Cast:
Chris Raven: Chris Pratt
Judge Maddox: Rebecca Ferguson
Jacqueline ‘JAQ’ Diallo: Kali Reis
Nicole Raven: Annabelle Wallis
Rob Nelson: Chris Sullivan
Britt Raven: Kylie Rogers
Patrick Burke: Jeff Pierre
Holt Charles: Rafi Gavron
Ray Vale: Kenneth Choi
Dan Vogel: Jamie McBride
David Webb: Ross John Gosla
Nicole’s Father: Mark Daneri
Bill Peterson: Haydn Dalton
Alexander Varga: Konstantin Podprugin
Molly: Philicia Saunders
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.