Mercy - 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray

I love a good murder mystery, but it’s a hard genre to play in. It takes grit and determination, but it also requires care. A clever hook can only go so far; you still have to stage your crime, establish the evidence, set up your key suspects, and then deliver a reveal that pays off all of that work. Like pulling the bottom brick in Jenga, you have to do all of this story-heavy lifting with ease and strategy, or it all falls apart.

Now, to its credit, Timur Bekmambetov’s Mercy enjoys a heck of a hook. In a near future where crime has run rampant, Los Angeles has the answer: the Mercy Court. Suspects of capital crimes have 90 minutes to establish their defense that achieves a set reasonable doubt percentage, or they’re executed on the spot, ensuring swift justice - one way or the other. Now, Robery/Homicide Detective Chris Raven (Chris Pratt) is the man in the chair. Once a champion of the Mercy Court, he’s on trial for the murder of his wife while AI Judge Maddox looms over him, assessing his percentage of guilt or innocence. Strapped in a chair, Detective Raven must work the crime scene to save his life and find a killer. 

But a tantalizing hook isn’t quite enough for this particular judge to deliver clemency for Mercy. When I saw the trailer, I thought the film looked like Chris Pratt stuck in a chair in front of a green screen looking at the internet, and that’s pretty much exactly what this film is. There’s an unfortunate artificiality to the whole setup that undermines any suspense or intensity when it’s clear our two leads are not in the same room, or any real room for that matter. 

As for the plot, when you have a lead of Cris Pratt’s stature, we’re left to automatically assume his innocence, so it falls on the alternate suspects to catch our attention. Unfortunately for them, it’s quite obvious who the person was with the candlestick in the billiard room. While throwing a ton of wizbang pop-up flashy visuals at us to make the stagnant setting feel interesting, Director Timur Bekmambetov mishandles the red herrings. By about a half hour in, it’s pretty easy to call the resolution, along with the last act twist. If this were a novel, you’d be forgiven for last-paging the rest of the film. It’s a very easy guess.  

To their credit, while they share no actual physical on-screen time together, Pratt and Ferguson manage to carry the film along through the barrage of swirling, whirling CGI pop-up screens. While I wouldn’t call Pratt the strongest actor to ever grace the screen, he does manage a dynamic presence. Personal character dramatics might be his weak spot, but when he’s got an idea and is buzzing away, he makes searching the internet look a little exciting. Ferguson is sadly given less to do as a simple on-screen AI personality. It looks like she could have shot her footage in a closet on her own time. It would have made for a more interesting character and possibly even more exciting film if they could have gotten her off the screen and in the same room as Pratt. 

At the end of the day, Mercy is just mediocre. It’s not bad enough to be called terrible, and it’s not exciting enough to be called good. It’s pass-the-time, watch-it-and-forget-it entertainment. I missed it in theaters, so I don’t know if the 3D presentation was worth the extra mustard and mayo, but as a two-dimensional home-video experience, it’s dramatically flat. 

Vital Disc Stats: The 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray 
Thanks to Amazon MGM and Alliance Entertainment, Mercy passes judgment on 4K UHD with a single-disc release. Pressed on a BD66 disc, the film is housed in a standard case with an identical artwork slipcover. The disc loads to a static image main menu with standard navigation options.

As alluded to in the main review, I’m curious whether 3D would have improved the film’s overall enjoyment, because while this 2160p Dolby Vision transfer is pretty good, it’s not a whole lot to look at. Again, almost the entirety of the film is Chris Pratt stuck in a chair watching pop-up screens with a screen of Rebecca Ferguson in the background. It’s all layers of CGI artificiality, so there’s little with a practical physical presence to observe and enjoy. The action almost never leaves that room, and when/if it does, it’s again designed to look like an on-screen video call or bodycam footage. So, to that point, fine details are a relative mixed bag. We can see and appreciate Pratt’s beard stubble, and a few of the video screen segments look well-detailed, and the big climax looks nice, but it’s not exactly a “wowzer” looking feature as a whole. Dolby Vision highlights primaries nicely and gives shadows some room to play, but deep inky black spaces are fairly minimal, so depth is always subject to the CGI trickery on screen. Encoding for the disc is strong, bitrates remain high and stable without issue. It’s just not a very interesting-looking feature.

On the stronger side of the A/V presentation, the Dolby Atmos track for Mercy kicks nicely. It’s a dialog-driven film, so that’s never an issue; it’s always front and center. And while most of the action takes place in a single room, the audio FX work to make the soundscape more dynamic and exciting is appreciated. Those pop-out screens slip in and out and around the hemisphere, giving plenty of surround activity. Overheads, likewise, are used to nice effect for those swirling, whirling, sliding sound effects. Occasionally, some of the video screen elements kick up in various channels or overheads as well. So, at least sonically, there’s a good bit going on through the film to keep those channels firing away. And like the video, once the climax kicks in, the audio also picks up a few points. Not the greatest Atmos mix ever, but perfectly effective. 

The sum total of extra features on this disc is zero. 

Mercy is perfectly mediocre entertainment. It’s not terrible, it’s not great, it passes time, but it’s almost immediately forgettable. Which is unfortunate because, all credit where it's due, the film has an interesting idea. It sets up a tantalizing near-future science-fiction setting that’s not too hard to imagine being possible. It’s just that, as a whodunit mystery, the execution (no pun intended) lacked immediacy. It could have been something lofty and exciting, but instead it feels like a Temu bargain Minority Report, with the hero stuck in a chair for 90 minutes. Also, as a mystery fan, I really hate being able to call the reveal that quickly. But I know folks who really dug this flick, and this disc is for them. I’d have liked to see this in 3D, but as a 2D 2160p Dolby Vision transfer, it’s pretty good, not amazing for what we see on screen. The Atmos track is more exciting and involving, so that picks up some points in the A/V score. Zero bonus features to speak of leads this to be a bare-bones disc for a flick that’s just “okay.” 

Stream it first, make sure you like it; I don’t advise a blind buy. Worth A Look