Mercy, a worse Taken for our generation
23 Feb 2026Score 4/10
Review
You already know the whole plot of Mercy from watching the trailer or knowing anything about the film. There are no surprises, there is no deeper analysis than what you would expect. It is not a woke movie, although there is a black police officer and all of the criminals shown in the movie are non-black.
If you are bored and want to watch a Chris Pratt movie, you can watch this and not totally hate your time, but I recommend you don’t.
Analysis
Chris Pratt is a detective, we are in a world that is exactly where we are going a few years in the future. Crime is rampant, the system can’t handle it, trials and the fake process that pro-crime judges have read into the law are destroying the United States. People who are obviously guilty are being released back into the streets to commit crime over and over again.
This has been revolutionarily fixed, not by removing the crazy amount of process the law requires, but by creating a whole new system, which is either replacing, or is running parallel to the old system. And this new system exists solely for murder and capital punishment. It is called the Mercy Court.
For [either all or only a portion of murder cases, the movie doesn’t make it clear], the perpetrator is, within minutes of being arrested, whisked off to sit in a chair at the Mercy Court. They are then put on trial by AI Judge Maddox. Maddox only takes cases when the initial probability of guilt is 97.5% or greater. You have 90 minutes to search through all the information Judge Maddox has at her disposal, which is virtually everything, and the accused can call whoever they want and that person is required to give truthful testimony. If you can point out information that reduces your probability of guilt lower than 92% then the Judge will release you.
This all explained in exposition during the first 10 or so minutes of the movie. Hearing this description one wonders why Judge Maddox could ever be considered to lower her probability of guilt if all the suspect has access to is the same information judge Maddox herself has, but whatever. Apparently Judge Maddox doesn’t really even look at all the information because Chris Pratt ends up being exonerated by video and location data Maddox already has access to.
I like this movie because it shows an absolutely extreme over-correction to our current system, but in doing so, it shows how terrible our current system actually is. There is a middle ground where obviously guilty people aren’t allowed to sit out on bond or locked up on death row for years and get the whole expense of a jury trial to just prove what is already obvious. Instead of 90 minutes lets give defendants 90 days maximum. They are brought to trial in that time frame. Trial is in front of an impartial AI Judge. And the sentence will be imposed a few weeks after that. Maybe only do this in cases where guilt is obvious (i.e. the crime occurs on video or there is DNA evidence which would only exist if defendant is guilty). Great system. Only pro-crime losers will argue against this.
But Mercy does not present a reasonable alternative, it presents the absolute other side of the spectrum where people are executed within a few hours after the crime was committed and the process has a significant chance of condemning innocent people. Let’s meet in the middle and all be happy.