FilmsScifi

Mercy: Chris Pratt versus the Machine (scifi film trailer).

There’s a moment in the Mercy trailer where Chris Pratt, sweating under the cold blue light of justice, looks up at the calm, unreadable face of an AI judge played by Rebecca Ferguson and says, “You were supposed to make things better.” And somewhere, Siri quietly updates its terms of service. Yes, folks — Mercy is coming to theatres (and IMAX, no less) on 23rd January 2026, and it’s shaping up to be a courtroom drama for the algorithmic age. Forget lawyers in wigs and long lunches at The Ivy. In the world of Mercy, trials are streamlined, evidence is digital, and your life literally depends on how well you can out-argue a machine you helped build.

Pratt plays Detective Chris Raven — a man accused of murdering his wife, given 90 minutes to clear his name before the AI judge he once championed decides whether he lives or dies. It’s a set-up straight out of a Kafka novel rewritten by ChatGPT on a bad day, and director Timur Bekmambetov (Wanted, Night Watch) looks to be leaning into every ounce of existential panic the premise allows.

The trailer opens with the sterile beauty of future Los Angeles — all glass, data streams, and people who look one firmware update away from obsolescence. Raven is led into a minimalist courtroom where Rebecca Ferguson’s Judge Maddox, an AI housed in an eerily lifelike body, presides. She’s part oracle, part algorithm, and all the more terrifying for being so calm. When she says, “The system is impartial,” you can practically hear the audience mutter, “Well, that’s us doomed.”

Mercy: Chris Pratt versus the Machine (scifi film trailer).
Mercy: Chris Pratt versus the Machine (scifi film trailer).

Rebecca Ferguson, fresh from bending time and sand in Dune, is clearly having a blast as the personification of legal perfection gone wrong — the kind of AI that quotes the law with absolute precision but has never once laughed at a cat video. Annabelle Wallis appears in haunting flashbacks as Raven’s late wife, whose death forms the mystery at the film’s heart, while the supporting cast (including Kali Reis, Chris Sullivan, and Kenneth Choi) fill out a world teetering between progress and paranoia.

Bekmambetov, no stranger to cinematic experimentation, is reportedly using his trademark “Screenlife” techniques — blending live action with real-time digital interfaces and immersive camera angles — to make Mercy feel like a trial being streamed directly from your future criminal record. Expect the camera to linger on every heartbeat, every flicker of biometric readout, every slightly-too-fast blink that could mean the difference between innocence and incineration.

And while the film boasts IMAX spectacle, don’t expect explosions and car chases (well, maybe one tasteful explosion). Mercy’s tension is quieter, more psychological — the kind that builds in silence, when you realise the most powerful being in the room doesn’t need to shout to ruin you. Think Minority Report meets 12 Angry Men meets Her, if “Her” spent less time being romantic and more time issuing death sentences.

It’s also nice to see Chris Pratt stretch his dramatic muscles again after a long run of saving galaxies, dinosaurs, and occasionally entire box-office slates. Here, he looks broken, desperate, and painfully human — the last analogue soul in a world that’s already decided humanity was the weak link in the system.

Here at SFcrowsnest magazine, we’ve always said science fiction’s greatest courtroom is the one where progress puts humanity itself on trial. Mercy looks ready to drag us all back into that timeless question: when we hand our morality over to machines, can we ever get it back?

ColonelFrog

Colonel Frog is a long time science fiction and fantasy fan. He loves reading novels in the field, and he also enjoys watching movies (as well as reading lots of other genre books).

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.