"Mercy" Puts A.I. on Trial

While I am all for putting A.I. on trial, I’m not sure if a science fiction movie from the company that wants to take your personal computers away is the right place to do it. “Mercy” is a movie that is frustrating beyond the fact that the script is predictable, cliché, and seems to pull last minute twists out of its ass; it is a frustrating movie because it is tackling a subject that it is either woefully incompetent in addressing or it has no interest in doing so (there’s a strong possibility that it is both).

The story: Chris (Chris Pratt) wakes up to find himself locked in a chair and on trial at Mercy Courthouse. Mercy is a new A.I. software program that simplifies (AKA: cheapens) the court proceedings, where evidence is given to an A.I. judge (Rebecca Fergason) who gives a guilty percentage to the suspect in the chair and gives said subject 90 minutes to prove their innocence or else be executed on the spot. This is a system where lawyers, a jury of your peers, and pesky things like cross-examination are done away with, and the person on trial has to have enough brain power to know how to collect evidence while being stuck to a chair.

You would think, having read all this, that “Mercy” would be one of those future dystopia movies that show the dangers of where society could be heading, and what kind of horrible system we are currently building. Indeed, that is what I suspected when the film started. But the movie is being funded by MGM, which is owned by Amazon, one of the tech companies whose founder, Jeff Bezos, recently gave an interview sharing his vision for personal computers to go away and for the public to subscribe to their tech on the cloud. That’s the kind of production company that is not going to fund a movie that is anti-A.I.

In fact, despite her coldness, the A.I. judge is surprisingly helpful to Chris in collecting evidence for his defense and even offers helpful advice on what a human would consider “a conflict of interest” to her own programming. Will the A.I. judge actually learn to think for herself? Can the programming be broken by Chris’s plight? In reality, that answer is no, but in Amazon la la land, an A.I. program is not to be used to destroy due process; it is a program that is here to help you prove your innocence (provided you know the right prompts, of course).

In the end, this is a movie that neither knows whether A.I. is a good thing or a bad thing. Chris’s observation, “you made mistakes, as we did,” is scant comfort knowing that others will be put in the same chair and will not have the smarts to be their own advocate (I suppose it would help to mention that Chris is a detective, which gives him unique knowledge of the system). I wonder if the screenplay had a more biting commentary before a tech company that has an interest in A.I. succeeding came in and demanded changes. I have no idea, but we are left with a movie with nothing to say and no bite in anything that happens.

P.S. I do want to give special mention to the 3D presentation. As someone who appreciates 3D as a storytelling effect, this is one of the most effective uses of the format and surrounds the audience in ways that were quite unique. It’s just a shame that the movie it's supporting is so dumb.

This review was originally published on The Fandom Post.