Watch the whole thing HERE!
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Watch the whole thing HERE!
CAST: Austin Abrams, Zach Cherry, Kali Reis, Paul Walter Hauser. Directed by Zach Cregger.
REVIEW: Set during one dangerous night, the reimagined “Resident Evil” begins with on a regular day for medical courier Bryan (Austin Abrams). Asked to do one more run, he agrees when he finds out, “It’s outside the zone, so it pays double.” As night falls, he sets off to Raccoon City General, precious cargo in hand, as a viral leak from pharmaceutical and biotechnology giant Umbrella Corporation turns people into violent mutants.
As the infected hunt for humans, Bryan tries to stay one step ahead during the chaos, as Umbrella attempts to contain and cover up the epidemic. Using borrowed phones Bryan unsuccessfully tries to contract the police and explain to his unimpressed girlfriend why he’s detained.
With his life hanging in the balance the bumbling Bryan must turn from hapless to hero.
“Resident Evil” delivers the thrills and gore you expect from “Barbarian” and “Weapons” director Zach Cregger, but it is its dark sense of humor that surprises. Darkly funny, the movie offers laughs and jump scares in equal measure as Bryan narrowly escapes the perils of a post infection world.
Horror fans will appreciate the genuinely creepy atmosphere. It’s a dark world that allows Cregger to explore the nasty stuff hiding in the shadows, showing just enough to set the viewers imaginations on fire.
When we do finally get a look at the tentacled creatures—think John Carpenter’s “The Thing”—or an acid-vomiting zombie, or the bloated blood sacs, they provide a primal blast of old-school horror that’s the good gory stuff horror fans buy tickets to see.
In other scenes when people get shot or squished, infected or otherwise, they don’t simply lay down and die. Instead, they explore in a fireworks pattern of plasma and viscera. It’s wet and squishy enough to make you simultaneously cringe and cackle.
At the film’s heart is Austin Abrams as everyman Bryan. He doesn’t have a lot of meaningful dialogue, he mostly mumbles to himself in frustration, but as a good guy in over his head, he’s easy to get on side with. Abrams, who is on screen for 95% of the film’s brisk 90-minute runtime, carries the movie with an exasperated everyman charm.
“Resident Evil” is a straightforward movie. Cregger, working from a script he co-wrote with Shay Hatten, keeps the story simple, refusing to let the action get bogged down by backstory or exposition. It’s an uncomplicated story of survival, buoyed by gloriously grotesque effects and a winning lead performance.
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.
