SYNOPSIS: Set three years from today, “Mercy,” a new sci fi action film starring Chris Pratt and Rebecca Ferguson, and now playing in theatres, sees Pratt play a detective accused of murdering his wife in a world where his fate will be determined by an AI judge. “The future of law enforcement is Mercy.”
CAST: Chris Pratt, Rebecca Ferguson, Annabelle Wallis, Kali Reis, Rafi Gavron, Chris Sullivan, Kenneth Choi, Kylie Rogers. Directed by Timur Bekmambetov.
REVIEW: A movie about AI that feels as though it was written by AI, “Mercy” is a hacky, old school detective story with a technological twist.
Set in the near future, “Mercy” follows LAPD homicide detective Chris Raven (Chris Pratt) one of the main proponents of a new technology-driven justice system. In a city overrun by crime and civil unrest, the Mercy Program is projected to offer fast, unbiased justice, acting as judge, jury, and executioner to prisoners presumed guilty until proven innocent.
As one of the public faces of the Mercy Program, Raven talks up the IA-based system, braying that the Mercy Capital Court will help clean up the streets. “I am proud to have sent the first suspect for trial here,” Raven says at a press conference. “And I will continue to send more until the message is received.”
The concept is simple. The accused have ninety minutes to present evidence and convince the AI judge (Rebecca Ferguson) of their innocence. If they fail to reach the 92% innocence threshold, they will be immediately executed so the good folks of L.A. County can “sleep at night” secure in the knowledge that they are safe.
Reven is all for it until he is accused of murdering his wife and set to face the judgement of the system he once championed. “I shouldn’t be here,” he says. “I loved my wife. I didn’t kill her.”
An attempt to breathe new life into a detective procedural, “Mercy” earns points for shaking up the genre, but any goodwill that comes along with that soon disappears under a fog of ludicrous twists, central casting characterizations and frenetic headache-inducing visuals.
In a movie filled with dubious storytelling choices, perhaps the biggest is the charisma killing decision to to keep Chris Pratt strapped to a chair for most of the running time. The action happens around him, like he’s sitting on a giant green screen, floating amid the body cam and surveillance footage as he uses his detective skills to prove his innocence. Playing the strapped-in, troubled cop with a dead partner and a drinking problem, doesn’t allow Pratt to use the charm that made him a star.
Ditto Rebecca Ferguson, seen here as though she handed in the head-and-shoulders performance as a digital judge via a Zoom call. She’s meant to be a cold, authoritative figure, void of emotion, and while she pulls it off, the icy demeanor dulls the character’s impact. “I was not designed to feel,” she says, and it shows.
Stranger than the casting decisions is the film’s take on AI. What begins as Hollywood sending the message that the clock is ticking, and if we don’t act AI will kill us—a message embraced by much of the creative community—becomes muddled near the end. No spoilers here, but the film’s point-of-view inexplicably changes from the idea that humanity, though imperfect, is superior to artificial intelligence to something akin to having sympathy for the artificial intelligence. It’s a polarizing topic and the film disappointingly fails to take an interesting or consistent stance on AI’s ethics and impact on the world.
“Mercy” is slick and face-paced but no amount of style and high-octane imagery can disguise the film’s fatal flaws.
SYNOPSIS: “Presence,” a new ghost movie directed by Steven Soderbergh and now playing in theatres, sees a dysfunctional family, Rebekah (Lucy Liu) and Chris (Chris Sullivan) and their teenagers, Tyler (Eddy Maday) and Chloe (Calliana Liana), move into a newly renovated hundred-year-old house. As the hard driving Rebekah dives head long into work, Chris flounders, Tyler reveals a mean streak, and Chloe mourns the loss of her best friend. When things mysteriously move on their own, and shelves crash in Chloe’s bedroom, a question arises, Are the odd events manifestations of Chloe’s grief or is there a strange presence in the house? “There is mystery in this world,” says Chris.
CAST: Lucy Liu, Julia Fox, Callina Liang, Eddy Maday, West Mulholland, Chris Sullivan. Directed by Steven Soderbergh and written by David Koepp.
REVIEW: Told from the point of view of the ghost, the scares in “Presence” are muted and not particularly supernatural. The horror here is the carefully observed, callous behavior between several of the characters.
Using a flamboyantly handheld camera, Soderbergh personifies the ghostly presence through camera movement. We see what the ghost sees, and that otherworldly surveillance reveals a family at odds with one another. Rebekah favors her athletic son and thinks that Chloe is being self-indulgent. “She cannot take us down with her,” she says. Chris grapples with family issues, fearing for the health of his marriage while Chloe acts out, drinking and hanging out with her brother’s strange friend from school (West Mulholland).
The result is a quietly unnerving movie—an emotional roller ghoster?—that values tension over outright frights.
It’s a stylish, visually interesting twist on a ghost story, so it’s a shame the characters aren’t well developed enough to engage the audience on anything other than a superficial level. As Chloe, Liang does much of the heavy lifting, but she’s surrounded by underwritten characters.
Add to that a third act twist that is much more conventional than you’d hope for a movie with this pedigree, and you’re left with a ghost story that entertains the eye but won’t move the spirit.
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 opens with a battle scene that would not be out of place in almost any other superhero movie.
The set-up has the Guardians — Peter Quill /Star-Lord (Chris Pratt), Gamora (Zoe Saldana), Drax the Destroyer (Dave Bautista) and Rocket (Bradley Cooper) — working for the Sovereigns, a thin-skinned race of aliens who have hired the heroes to protect valuable batteries from an inter-dimensional monster.
The action is as wild and woolly as we’ve come to expect from these big CGI extravaganzas, but the thing that sets the scene apart from all other superhero movies is the sheer, unbridled joy brought to the screen by Baby Groot (Vin Diesel), a tree-like being too small to take part in the fight. Instead he blissfully dances throughout to Mr. Blue Sky, the lush, Beatles-esque ELO song that underscores the sequence.
The scene and the movie brim with the missing element of so many other big superhero movies — fun.
“That’s what we hoped to do,” says star Michael Rooker, “bring back the fun. It was fun as hell doing it.”
Rooker reprises his role as blue-skinned, red-finned mercenary Yondu. The former Walking Dead actor — he played Daryl’s older brother Merle Dixon — jokes that his normal look, his handsomely craggy face, is actually make-up, and the Blue Man Group style we see in the movie is the face he was born with. “It takes four or five hours to get this on,” he says, pulling at his cheek. “The real problem is getting the fin off.”
Yondu’s weapon of choice is a flying arrow made of special sound-sensitive metal he controls through whistling.
“Dude,” he says, “everyone is digging that weapon.” It’s the character’s trademark and Rooker laughs when remembering talking to director James Gunn about the role. “Man, I was glad I was able to whistle.”
“The first time I got to whistle I did the melodic whistle… I hypnotized one of the aliens and then I shot out a piercing whistle. Yondu has different whistles.”
One wild action sequence with Yondu’s deadly arrow and set to ’70s pop ditty Come a Little Bit Closer is a showstopper, an imaginatively staged set piece with a huge body count and just as many laughs.
“That whole sequence is very much like a western gun fight if you think about it,” Rooker says. “You go out, and jacket pulled back, methodical, not fast. It is a total tribute.”
In the scene he is accompanied by two computer-generated characters, Baby Groot and Rocket, a genetically engineered raccoon-based bounty hunter. Neither actually appeared on set while shooting, but Rooker says they were there in spirit.
“Because these movies use a lot of CGI they require your imagination to be fertile and open and ripe for seeding,” he says. “I’m like, ‘There is Baby Groot. He’s over there and he’s sopping wet…What have they done to him?’ I talk to them like they were any other two characters.”
Yondu may be a vicious, arrow-wielding mercenary but he’s also the film’s emotional core and James Gunn says people will be “surprised by Michael Rooker’s performance. He deserves an Academy Award nomination. No joke.”
What does Rooker think? “We’ll see about that bro. I’m up for anything.”
“Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2” opens with a battle scene that would not be out of place in almost any other superhero movie. The set-up has the Guardians—Peter Quill / Star-Lord (Chris Pratt), Gamora (Zoe Saldana), Drax the Destroyer (Dave Bautista) and Rocket (Bradley Cooper)—working for the Sovereigns, a thin skinned race of aliens who have hired the heroes to protect valuable batteries from an inter-dimensional monster called the Abilisk. In exchange they will receive Gamora’s estranged sister Nebula (Karen Gillan).
It’s a lot of names and intrigue to keep straight right off the top. The action is as wild and woolly as we’ve come to expect from these big CGI extravaganzas, but the thing that sets the scene apart from all other superhero movies is the sheer, unbridled joy brought to the screen by Baby Groot (Vin Diesel), a tree-like being too small to take part in the fight. Instead he blissfully dances throughout to “Mr. Blue Sky,” the lush, Beatlesque ELO song that underscores the sequence.
The scene and the movie brims with the missing element of so many other big superhero movies—fun.
Anchoring the rock ‘em sock ‘em action is a subtext about family; you can choose your friends but you can’t choose your family. Gamora is bound by blood to a sister with an extreme case of sibling rivalry while Peter must choose between his birth father, a small ‘g’ god named Ego the Living Planet (Kurt Russell), his adopted dad Yondu (Michael Rooker) and his Guardian posse.
Set to a soundtrack of 70s radio hits and a cavalcade of pop culture references “Vol 2” is less story driven than the first film. With the origin tale out of the way it focuses on the characters and their relationships. Director James Gunn doesn’t allow the characters to become overwhelmed by the computer generated imagery. From Rocket’s wisecracks to Peter the semi-inept action hero and Gamora’s pragmatism—“If he does turn out to be evil will just kill him.”—the characters are front and center. Like the true scavengers they are, Drax—with Bautista’s deadpan delivery—and Baby Groot—“He’s too adorable to kill,” says Taserface (Chris Sullivan)—steal the show.
Fans will get what they expect—loads of goofy, gross and gooey cartoon action and cool Day-Glo creatures—but it’s the characters that make it so enjoyable. They spend as much time laughing as they do in action, bringing with them an infectious joyfulness. The movie is at it’s best when the characters are hanging out, when Peter finally gets to play catch with his dad with a ball made of pure energy, when Drax is ribbing Mantis (Pom Klementieff) or when Baby Groot is perched on the shoulders of his Guardian pals.
But Gunn also stages interesting action. The “Come a Little Bit Closer” sequence with Yondu’s deadly arrow is a showstopper, an imaginatively staged set piece with a huge body count and just as many laughs.
“Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2” is a mix of high-tech and lowbrow that breaks the sequel curse. It’s a tad too long, succumbs to CGI overload in its final moments and the not so subtle anti-bullying and free to be you and me messaging feels tacked on but is so much fun (there’s that word again) you’ll forgive its transgressions.
There will be a time when the “Guardian of the Galaxy’s” formula of 70s kitsch and wisecracks won’t work but we’re not there yet.
