Mercy (2026) A Smart Little Tech Thriller That Let Me Solve the Puzzle (and Still Have Fun Doing It)
- Dan Brooks
- 2 days ago
- 3 min read
In the near future, a detective stands on trial accused of murdering his wife. He has 90 minutes to prove his innocence to the advanced A.I. Judge he once championed, before it determines his fate.
Walking into Mercy, my expectations were modest and specific: a near-future action mystery with a splash of AI paranoia and a whodunit spine.
Good news - it pretty much delivered exactly that.
Even better, it delivered something rarer these days: a movie I enjoyed while figuring out where it was headed. I didn’t walk out furious at the twist, but I did walk out quietly pleased with myself, which is a small but underrated cinematic pleasure.
I caught this one after dinner with my father, which automatically puts a movie into a different testing category. If both generations are engaged - and debating how I figured it out afterward - that’s usually a good sign. He had a great time. I spent the ride home explaining my mental corkboard like I was auditioning for a streaming-era remake of Columbo.
Chris Pratt spends a lot of this movie seated, which sounds like a backhanded compliment until you realize how much heavy lifting that requires. He’s trapped, framed, and working through layers of suspicion with mostly facial expressions and vocal shifts, and honestly? It works. There’s a solid emotional range there even when the action is happening three rooms away.
The plot itself keeps tossing out twists and misdirection, which I appreciated. Every time you think you’ve got the bad guy pinned to the bulletin board, the movie slides another photo into the frame. That said… if you’ve watched as many thrillers as I have, the breadcrumbs start glowing neon about halfway through. I won’t spoil anything, but let’s just say my internal detective badge was flashing before the third act rolled around.
Where Mercy stumbled for me was in the artificial stuff - literally.
Some of the AI-generated sequences and overhead car chases had that unmistakable screensaver-with-a-budget look. You know the feeling: technically impressive, emotionally hollow, and just synthetic enough that your brain goes, Yep, a computer did this. It pulled me out of the story a couple of times, even while the plot was humming along nicely.
To the film’s credit, the pacing never really sagged. Once it gets moving, it keeps a steady clip, and I never felt like checking my watch or mentally reorganizing my grocery list. That alone puts it ahead of a lot of sleek-but-sleepy techno-thrillers.
The only big cliché that made me sigh a little was Hollywood’s eternal fascination with giving AI something suspiciously close to a soul. I get it - machines with emotions are scarier than machines with spreadsheets - but at some point I just want someone in a lab coat to yell, “It’s software!” and unplug the thing like they’re resetting a router.
The movie doesn’t pretend to be a philosophical mastermind. There’s a light cautionary hum in the background - don’t hand too much power to the algorithms, maybe keep humans in the loop - but mostly it’s here to entertain, not launch a TED Talk about ethics. And honestly? That’s fine. Not every thriller needs to change your worldview. Some of them just need to keep you guessing and send you home satisfied.
Who’s this for?
Pretty much anyone who likes tech-forward mysteries, contained thrillers, and puzzle-box plots where you can race the screenplay to the reveal. I don’t think the genre walls are too narrow here - casual moviegoers should have fun, and seasoned thriller fans can play armchair detective the whole way through.
My score? A clean 7 out of 10. Not revolutionary, but smart, solid, and entertaining - especially if you enjoy being slightly ahead of the curve while still enjoying the ride.
And I’ll leave you with this:
We all know we don’t want to hand the keys over to Skynet… so maybe let’s just be a little safer about who we give admin privileges to.
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