Mercy (2026 film)

Mercy
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Timur Bekmambetov
Written by	Marco van Belle
Produced by	Charles Roven Robert Amidon Timur Bekmambetov Majd Nassif
Starring	Chris Pratt Rebecca Ferguson Kali Reis Annabelle Wallis Chris Sullivan Kylie Rogers
Cinematography	Khalid Mohtaseb
Edited by	Austin Keeling Lam T. Nguyen Dody Dorn
Music by	Ramin Djawadi
Production companies	Amazon MGM Studios Atlas Entertainment Bazelevs Company
Distributed by	Amazon MGM Studios (United States and Canada) Sony Pictures Releasing International (International)
Release dates	January 19, 2026 (2026-01-19) (Regal Cinemas) January 23, 2026 (2026-01-23) (United States)
Running time	100 minutes[1]
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$60 million[2]
Box office	$53 million[3][4]

Mercy is a 2026 American science fiction thriller film directed by Timur Bekmambetov, starring Chris Pratt and Rebecca Ferguson. The plot involves a detective (Pratt) accused of murdering his wife who must prove his innocence to an artificial intelligence judge (Ferguson). The film also stars Kali Reis, Annabelle Wallis, Chris Sullivan, and Kylie Rogers.

Mercy was released in the United States by Amazon MGM Studios on January 23, 2026. It has grossed $53 million worldwide against a $60 million budget and received negative reviews from critics.

In a futuristic Los Angeles with crime on the rise, the Mercy Capital Court uses artificial intelligence judges to put defendants on trial for violent crimes. The AI judges give the defendants all available resources to find and provide all the evidence needed and are given 90 minutes to prove their innocence, or be executed via a sonic blast.

Los Angeles Police Department Detective Christopher "Chris" Raven, a strong proponent of the court, is on trial for the murder of his wife Nicole. Presiding over his case is AI Judge Maddox. Chris is accused of going to see Nicole despite being separated due to his alcoholism. Chris was seen leaving the house, and their daughter Britt discovered Nicole's body with a knife in her abdomen. He was arrested at a bar following an altercation with other cops. His current guilt probability is 97%, and he needs to go under 92% to avoid execution.

Chris tries to talk to Britt and convince her that he is innocent, but Nicole's parents, who are currently watching over Britt, prohibit her from talking to him. Maddox uses surveillance footage and other recorded information to help Chris piece together who could have killed Nicole. Chris also speaks to his friend Rob Nelson, who was also a coworker of Nicole who says everyone was expressing concern over her.

Chris learns that Nicole was seeing another man, Patrick Burke, just before her death. Chris gets his partner on the force, Jaq Diallo, to track Burke down. He admits that he was seeing Nicole because she felt that she could not communicate with Chris over what was troubling her, but he had an alibi at the time of Nicole's murder. Jaq then brings Burke in as a person of interest. With Burke eliminated as a suspect, Chris's guilt probability increases.

Chris must confront the accusations against him. He was previously sober but relapsed after the murder of his former partner, Ray Vale, and Chris holds regret for not shooting the suspect dead because he was later acquitted and found not guilty of Ray's death. The alcoholism led to him growing aggressive with Nicole and shutting her out, and she would record him for his sober self to watch. Britt would also come to resent her dad and confided in her boyfriend that she wanted them to get a divorce, as Maddox shows Chris a video call between the two of them.

With time running out, Chris starts to "think out loud" and try to separate suspects from everyone that was in close contact with Nicole. He eliminates Burke and Nicole's parents, separating the friends and coworkers. Chris gets back in touch with Burke to try and determine what kind of issues Nicole spoke to him about, and it boils down to a work issue. Chris removes the friends as suspects and tries to go through the coworkers.

Chris recalls hosting a barbecue with Nicole just days before the murder. He tries to narrow it down to a few people that were communicating with Nicole. Maddox shows Chris the records of one coworker, Holt Charles, who appears to have had money issues and was being helped by Rob. Chris suspects that Holt might have killed Nicole for money, so he has Maddox contact Holt. He explains that it was actually him helping Rob. Further research shows that certain chemicals were missing from work, and Rob is responsible. Chris also goes over Britt's video call, as she heard a noise and suspected it was her dad coming home, but other footage shows Chris wasn't home at the time. When Britt recorded downstairs, she caught the door open, as well as what looks like an image of a man. Maddox then shows Chris footage of his neighbor's security cameras, which show a rustling in the bushes, and when she catches surveillance footage from a parking lot, Rob is seen exiting the neighbor's trunk.

Chris calls Jaq and tells her to go to Rob's house but warns her and her team that he might be armed. As the SWAT team arrives at Rob's house, they find he is not there, but they do find the stolen chemicals, as well as detailed plans to craft a bomb. Maddox pulls up more info on Rob, learning that he was raised in the foster care system, along with his brother, David Webb, the very first person executed by Mercy Court. Chris quickly realizes that this whole thing is a revenge scheme orchestrated against him. This officially clears Chris and ends the trial, but he knows that if he leaves the chair, the network connection through Maddox will be severed, and he will be unable to track Rob. He tries to contact Britt, but footage from her grandparents' front door shows Rob kidnapping her and taking her into his truck. A timer then goes off, killing most of the SWAT team when Rob's shed explodes.

Jaq pursues Rob in her hovercycle, as it is deduced that Rob is carrying tons of explosives toward Mercy Court to destroy the entire building with Chris inside, while taking Britt as a hostage. The cops are able to take Rob off his path and away from Mercy Court, but Jaq tries to get the task force captain to take Rob out. Chris pleads against this since Britt is inside, but the captain arms a bomb robot to detonate under the truck as Rob drives over the bridge, but Maddox hacks into the bomb and disables it, preventing the explosion. Rob eventually makes it back to Mercy Court and crashes the truck into the building after Maddox has evacuated everyone. The network resets and locks Chris in with seconds before he is executed, but Maddox reboots in time to let him go so he can save his daughter.

Chris confronts Rob at the front, and the two fight until he is able to disarm him. Chris prepares to execute Rob, but Britt and Maddox try to get Chris to stop so that Maddox can give Rob his own trial. Jaq shoots Rob, but Chris wants to hear him out. Rob says that David was innocent of the murder that he was tried and executed for since he spoke to David at the time that the victim's body was found. Maddox pulls up footage that confirms David was nowhere near the crime scene at the time of the murder and that he was in contact with Rob. It is revealed that Jaq deleted evidence and condemned David to death to prove that Mercy is effective. Jaq and Rob are both taken into custody.

Britt runs up to her father and hugs him. Maddox shuts off, and Chris's case is dismissed.

Chris Pratt and Rebecca Ferguson star in the film.

• Chris Pratt as Det. Christopher "Chris" Raven, an LAPD officer who is on trial for the murder of his wife^[5]
• Rebecca Ferguson as Judge Maddox, an AI who is part of the Mercy program^[5]
• Kali Reis as Jacqueline "Jaq" Diallo, Chris's partner^[5]
• Annabelle Wallis as Nicole Raven, Chris's late wife^[5]
• Chris Sullivan as Robert "Rob" Nelson, Chris's AA sponsor and Nicole's co-worker^[5]
• Kylie Rogers as Britt Raven, Chris's daughter^[5]
• Kenneth Choi^[5] as Ray Vale, Chris's late partner
• Rafi Gavron^[5] as Holt Charles, a co-worker of Nicole
• Jeff Pierre^[5] as Patrick Burke, a man Nicole was seeing before she died
• Tom Rezvan^[5] as a governor

It was announced in January 2024 that a science fiction thriller film entitled Mercy was being made for Amazon MGM Studios with Chris Pratt starring, directed by Timur Bekmambetov from a script by Marco Van Belle and produced by Charles Roven, Robert Amidon, Bekmambetov, and Majd Nassif.^[6][7]

In March, Rebecca Ferguson and Annabelle Wallis joined the cast in undisclosed roles.^[8][9] In April, Kali Reis, Rafi Gavron, Chris Sullivan, Kenneth Choi, and Kylie Rogers joined the cast.^[10][11] In May, Jeff Pierre joined the cast of the film.^[5]

Principal photography began on April 18, 2024, in Los Angeles, with Khalid Mohtaseb serving as the cinematographer. Pratt suffered an ankle injury on day four of filming, posting a photo of a swollen ankle on his Instagram page.^[12] Filming wrapped on May 23, 2024.^[13]

Ramin Djawadi was revealed to have composed the score in January 2026.^[14]

Mercy was shown early for patrons of AMC Theatres and Regal Cinemas on January 19, 2026, as part of their Screen Unseen and Monday Mystery Movie programs, respectively. This made it the first IMAX film to be released via the programs.^[15]

Mercy was released in the United States on January 23, 2026, in 3D and IMAX, having previously been due for release on August 15, 2025.^[16][17][18]

As of February 17, 2026, Mercy has grossed $24 million in the United States and Canada, and $29 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $53 million.^[4] In the United States and Canada, Mercy went on to debut to $12.6 million, becoming the first film to dethrone Avatar: Fire and Ash after five weeks. Its total was affected by the January 2026 North American winter storm that closed about 400 theaters.^[19]

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 24% of 155 critics' reviews are positive. The website's consensus reads: "Constricting its two stars inside an airless presentation of a clunky techno-thriller premise, Mercy is tedious enough to make you cry uncle."^[20] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 34 out of 100, based on 34 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable" reviews.^[21] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B−" on an A+ to F scale.^[19]

In a one out of five review, Clarisse Loughrey of The Independent called it "a baffling piece of work that happily swipes the mood and aesthetics of Hollywood's police state dystopias (Minority Report, RoboCop, Blade Runner, etc), while presenting such horrors as an agreeable norm."^[22] Radheyan Simonpillai of The Globe and Mail stated that "it's not like the premise isn't intriguing. It's just that the result is the kind of soulless response you'd expect from AI, should it be prompted to make a 'screenlife' version of Minority Report, with some elements from Speed."^[23] Peter Howell of Toronto Star earned a zero out of four rating, describing it as "lazily written, chaotically directed and played out with all the zest of a convenience store security video, it lacks not only vision and purpose but the faintest hint of entertainment."^[24]

Mercy has been compared with other films with similar plot elements, including Minority Report, The Fugitive, RoboCop and its 2014 remake (all featuring the protagonist wrongfully connected to some mysterious murder), Searching (also produced by Bekmambetov; a man searches for his daughter's whereabouts across social media, and she's later revealed to be charged with a falsified murder), and others.^[22][25]

Close comparisons have been drawn with Minority Report in particular, another sci-fi thriller with a similar plot, starring Tom Cruise and directed by Steven Spielberg. Both films feature semi-automated justice systems implemented in the near future in a major US city, where those charged with crimes stand little chance against the evidence produced against them by means of advanced technologies. Both movies start by praising the success of said new programs, and then the plot subverts that premise by introducing the main character (Pratt and Cruise, respectively), an officer who championed the new judicial program, charged with a murder they say they could not commit; at the end of each story, it is revealed that another character, closely associated with and trusted by the protagonist, interfered with the evidence of the very first trials conducted through these systems, resulting in biased outcomes (and unjust sentences) that would reinforce the public's positive perception and reception of these newly implemented judicial technologies.^[26]

American movie critic Bob Mondello concluded his comments on Mercy by stating, "[T]he overall effect is secondhand, sort of cinematic junk food — roughly what you'd expect of a Minority Report knockoff that was crafted not by Steven Spielberg, who also directed Lincoln, but by [Timur] Bekmambetov, who also directed Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter."^[27]

• Mercy at IMDb