Story Movie
The near future, Los Angeles. To combat high crime rates, the government begins using the “Mercy” AI judicial system, which determines whether a suspect is guilty and carries out the sentence itself. Two years later, veteran police officer Chris Raven finds himself in the defendant’s chair—the very man who sent the first criminal to “Mercy” for judgment. Chris is accused of murdering his own wife, and he has just 90 minutes to prove his innocence to the heartless machine.
Review 4K Movie
When I sit down to watch a movie like this, I’m fully aware that I shouldn’t expect a masterpiece. It’s simple entertainment, meant solely to amuse, not to broaden horizons. That’s why I immediately set out to find the positives, rather than hunting for the negatives. But even purely entertaining content can be done intelligently. Or at least with respect for the audience. Here, however, plagiarism and shoddy workmanship are glaringly obvious from the very first minutes.
The screenwriter obviously tried to blend the concept of preventive justice, borrowed directly from *Onery* (2002), with the concept of crime control through instant punishment—for example, as in the *Judge Dredd* universe. However, these two halves are from such different worlds that they categorically refuse to come together as a single whole.
The exposition presents us with a city that is simultaneously mired in crime and serves as a digital concentration camp. Am I the only one who thinks that when formulating the basis of a dystopia, you have to choose just one thing? But never mind, let’s keep watching… In this world, to reduce crime, the presumption of guilt is introduced, under which the defendant must prove their innocence, rather than the other way around. To this end, extraordinary judicial powers are transferred to a specially trained AI, which, during an impartial trial based on circumstantial evidence, calculates the probability of guilt, then delivers a guilty verdict—and immediately carries out the death sentence. Logic?! Why go to all that trouble when the instant justice system from *Judge Dredd* does the same thing, but much more simply and clearly for the average person?
But the real kicker is the procedure. The local version of Judge Dredd, in the form of an AI with unclear functionality, gives the defendant 90 minutes and access to all databases—both archives and online data—so that he can find evidence of his own innocence.
Wait. So how is this supposed to work in theory?! We open the top search results on Kinopoisk and find the most famous innocent men—Andy Dufresne (“The Shawshank Redemption”) or Edward Delacroix (“The Green Mile”). Could they have cleared their names if they had a police terminal at their disposal and an hour and a half to spare? As far as I’m concerned, that’s a rhetorical question.
It gets even better. The viewer is shown a world of total digital surveillance with obviously modern technology. And do you know how they solve privacy issues here? They buy an unregistered SIM card. Any ideas on how to hide an entire truck with a trailer from “Big Brother”?
Simple: remove the GPS tracker, cover up the license plates, and voilà! The invisible vehicle is ready. This and much more reflects the level of futurism from the era when the first smartphones appeared. But never mind that. Let’s assume it’s retrofuturism and move on…
The main character is a seasoned cop who, for some unknown reason, allegedly killed his wife the day before, then got drunk and remembers nothing. The system assigns him over 95% of the blame. Based on what? Motive? Evidence? A coherent theory of the prosecution? And also, let me remind you, “Big Brother” is watching every sneeze, but the only evidence against him is footage from the intercom at the entrance and exit? Seriously? With evidence like that, the probability of guilt is over 95%? Am I the only one who thinks that any lawyer, even in the most authoritarian judicial system, would tear this “analysis” to shreds?
But there’s more. For viewers who grew up on 2000s sci-fi, the game of “Name That Tune” effectively begins from the very first minutes. Every scene of even the slightest significance—both in terms of meaning and presentation—is a nod to one cult film or another. Despite the filmmakers’ best efforts to hide traces of direct borrowing, watching the film turns into a nostalgic quiz.
From what has been written, it may seem that the film, if not hitting rock bottom, is floating somewhere very close to it. However, in fairness, it’s worth noting that despite its blatant derivative nature, there are no obvious lulls in the film. The screenwriter almost deliberately cobbled something together. The director put something on the screen, while bringing in a production team and contractors who weren’t the worst. The actors, including the leads, go through the motions diligently at times. By any measure, it could have been much worse, and this is one of those cases where the word “just okay” sums it all up.
Essentially, this is a purely commercial product, cobbled together on the principle of “this will do” from tried-and-true fragments of “noble” twenty-year-old material, which a new generation of viewers might, in theory, perceive as original content.
But theory is theory, and in reality, the result is a bland product aimed at an unclear audience. For a viewer unfamiliar with its direct borrowings and blatant homages, it’s just another sci-fi flick with decent visuals and a vague world whose internal logic is frankly broken. For the connoisseur, it’s an opportunity to feel nostalgic for a time when the grass was greener, the sun was brighter, and films like this were made by people who had something to say.
Precisely because it’s a product that’s essentially and visually aimed at no one in particular—it’s unclear who it’s intended for—I give it a firm “no.”
