Mercy
Mercy was what felt like the only movie that came out in January 2026. Seriously, all of us in the Movie Munchy team were so bored. So we decided we would have a laugh at what seemed like would be a horrible movie from all the reviews, the box office, and the fact that they tried to cast Chris Pratt in a serious role. But surprisingly, Mercy wasn’t that bad.
Now, there is a big chance you haven’t heard of Mercy; that’s because it had probably one of the worst marketing campaigns I’ve ever seen. Seriously, they just dropped the trailers and then ghosted us. This led to the box office downfall. They thought that Chris Pratt and Rebecca Ferguson could carry the marketing for this movie…seriously?!
As to the plot, I don’t think it’s that bad, just a bit confused. It doesn’t know if it wants to be a murder mystery or an action movie. It follows a police officer called Chris Raven, and played by Chris Pratt, being accused of murdering his wife, who was found dead by his daughter, and is sent to the Mercy court, where an AI, played by Rebecca Ferguson, tries to piece together the case, as the timer until he is killed goes down from 90 minutes. I think this works really well from a plot and cinematography view. The timer slowly going down created a lot of tension, and the use of police cameras, security cameras, social media posts, and phone calls makes the way they present this murder mystery really interesting. The main problem is that the movie spends way too much time presenting evidence that Chris murdered his wife and his relationship with his daughter, rather than planting seeds as to who actually killed her, and when it is revealed, it just feels so underwhelming.
Then, instead of letting us sit on any clues that there were for a moment, it goes into an action scene where the killer tries to crash into the mercy court. For me, this ruined the tension and pacing in the movie, and meant my initial impression was pretty bad. But looking back on it now, I think ¾ of the movie was decent to surprisingly good. I think Chris Pratt has an underwhelming performance as the protagonist, which is somewhat to be expected by now,, but everyone else does great.
Overall, I think Mercy is a movie that is over hated by critics, unknown to its existence by fans, but has solid acting and a decent plot, with some minor flaws along the way. We give Mercy a 52%.
