Mercy — 2026

A Movie Review

By C.J. Barembruch | I Am Is and Was ™

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7H7Djx17l8Y

Own or Rent Mercy - Here

Namaste. 👋

What would happen if the system you built to protect people — turned on you?

That is the question sitting at the heart of Mercy. And it is not a comfortable one.

In a near future Los Angeles where crime has outrun the capacity of human courts to contain it, a new solution has been deployed. The Mercy Court. An AI judge — cold, precise, and utterly without sentiment — given the authority to try defendants for violent offenses and carry out the sentence.

Guilty or innocent. Decided in ninety minutes. No appeals.

Every device you own. Every camera, every phone, every doorbell — registered to the municipal cloud. Evidence gathered instantly. Judgment delivered swiftly.

The man who championed this system, who believed in it enough to help build it, is Detective Chris Raven — played by Chris Pratt in what is quietly one of his most restrained and committed performances to date. He carries this film from a chair. Literally. And he holds it.

When Raven wakes up strapped to that chair — hungover, disoriented, staring at the image of Judge Maddox on a screen before him — his innocence rating is sitting at 97% guilty.

The charge is the murder of his wife.

The judge deciding his fate is the AI he helped create.

And the clock is already running.

Rebecca Ferguson as Judge Maddox is the most compelling reason to watch this film. She delivers something genuinely difficult — a presence that is simultaneously authoritative and unsettling, a voice of pure logic in a world that runs on something messier. The tension between Pratt's raw human desperation and Ferguson's algorithmic certainty is where the film lives at its best.

Now here is why this film belongs on iamisandwas.com

We live in a world that is increasingly being judged by its evidence. By its digital footprint. By what the algorithm can see and measure and quantify. By the data trail we leave behind every single day — the posts, the searches, the locations, the purchases.

But evidence is not truth.

Evidence is a snapshot. A frozen moment. A photograph of who you were — not who you are becoming.

The All Is Mind. The physical world is always lagging behind the inner one. What Mercy asks — in the language of a thriller, with ninety minutes on the clock and a man's life in the balance — is the same question this empire asks every single day.

What happens when the system judges you by your past — and refuses to see your becoming?

What happens when the evidence says guilty — and the truth says something else entirely?

I am not going to tell you how it ends.

I am going to tell you that you need to find out for yourself.

Mercy is available now on Prime Video for rent or digital purchase.

Own it on DVD or Blu Ray - Here

Note: Amazon frequently rotates their library. Please check Prime at the link above to see if this is currently included with your membership at no extra cost.

Directed by: Timur Bekmambetov Starring: Chris Pratt, Rebecca Ferguson, Kali Reis, Annabelle Wallis, Chris Sullivan, Kylie Rogers Rated: PG-13 Runtime: 100 minutes Released: January 23, 2026

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