You have not experienced Chris Pratt sitting in a chair until you’ve seen it in 4K. I kid but that is the high concept of Timur Bekmambetov’s latest screen movie. He’s heavily invested in the format and Searching and Missing he produced were the best, most natural about how we interact with screens in real life.
In Mercy, Chris Raven (Pratt) finds himself in the AI trial system he spearheaded. Accused of murdering his wife (Annabelle Wallis), he has 90 minutes to create reasonable doubt using all the files available in the cloud. With shades of D.O.A. and Minority Report, far from perfect movies themselves, Mercy is a bit of the Roger Corman exploitation knock-off version, but it’s still a breeze to watch in 90 minutes.
Raven may be stuck in the chair, but the footage he reviews includes past clips of himself on the job, and other contemporary events. The plot requires far too many coincidences to make this all work, but by the time you realize they couldn’t really solve it, you’re already invested.
As for the 4K edition, Mercy was showing in IMAX theaters in January and it is a stark chamber Raven sits in, with nice shadowy corners. The footage he’s sifting through is vivid on location in Los Angeles, which is a boon for local production these days too.
There is some nice surround with drones flying over in the rear, crosstalk back and forth between speakers, and big explosions in the climax. So Raven may be conducting his entire trial in the cloud, but the audience still gets an immersive experience.