Lisa Johnson Mandell’s Mercy review says you won’t exactly be at the edge of your seat watching Christ Pratt tied to a chair for most of the movie.

The premise is promising: Humankind vs AI.

It’s one of society’s most current concerns. Everyone’s posting and chatting about it.

But AI and its dubious humanity issues are so prevalent and volatile these days that it’s becoming increasingly difficult to come up with something fresh, new, thought provoking and entertaining on the subject. From the time it takes to shepherd a film project from conception through release, what started out a year ago as being futuristic and prophetic is already old news.

In essence, Mercy attempts to entertain by having their characters solve problems and justify behavior or condemn it with evidence found on small screens and body cams—something millions of people worldwide do on a daily, if not hourly basis. “Did you see that clip of the guy trying to…?” we say to each other several times a day.

It’s just not that exciting to watch our common small screen habits played out on the big screen, even if they’re being enacted by popular and talented action stars like Chris Pratt and Rebecca Ferguson, who are largely inert throughout the film.

That’s not what most people go to the movies to see.

Mercy review — the plot thickens…kind of

Pratt plays a detective in the not too distant Los Angeles future, who wakes up one day manacled to a chair, with a giant video screen in front of him. He is electronically informed that he’s on trial for murdering his wife, something he has no recollection of doing.

He has somehow landed in a new judiciary program called “Mercy Court” where an AI judge (Ferguson) has access to every screen everywhere all at once, is set to oversee trial, verdict and execution(if found guilty) in 90 minutes.

He must disprove the security cam, body cam and cell phone footage of his actions over the past several hours, that clearly point to him brutally killing his wife in their family home.

Throughout the film, Ferguson is nothing more than a giant, emotion free, talking head, while Pratt is tied to a chair. Not the most compelling positions for actors with popular and proven abilities for physicality in action movies.

When the momentum finally revs up at the end, it’s too little, too late, too confusing and too silly to even matter, and the audience has more than enough time to check out of a film about a legal system that is only slightly more frustrating than the one we’re currently experiencing.

The last six months have not been the most successful for Russian director/producer Timur Bekmambetov, who has a producer credit on the universally panned most recent iteration of War of the Worlds, also about a guy sitting in front of a screen. The sci-fi “thriller” released last July currently has a whopping 4 on Rotten Tomatoes, and is up for six Razzie Awards, including worst picture.

Still, Mercy has a few bright spots. It’s fun to see Chris Sullivan from This Is Us back in a suitably meaty role, and the flying motorcycles the police force uses to soar above traffic are works of awe and wonder.

Unfortunately, they’re not enough to save the film from being tiresome. We have met the future, and the future is last week. As a matter of fact, another humankind vs AI movie released over 40 years ago starring Chris Pratt’s father-in-law, treated the theme infinitely better, and with more finesse. You know what I’m talking about.

Rated PG-13

1 Hour 40 Minutes

Lisa Johnson Mandell’s Mercy review says you won’t exactly be at the edge of your seat watching Chris Pratt tied to a chair for most of the movie.