'' MERCY '' : FILM REVIEW SNIPPET

For a film written by a human - Marco van Belle - Mercy shows all the indicators of being written by an AI.

In fact, at the very end, there's even a climactic dialogue that sounds less like a dialogue and more like the disclaimers ChatGPT and Google's Gemini might use about AI making mistakes.

'' We just did what we were programmed to do. Human or A.I. we all make mistakes,'' declare the two main characters.

MERCY is what we call a '' screen-life'' film - a near real-time story told through screams, tablets, mobile phones, front-door cameras and surveillance feeds that dig through personal folders, picture galleries and social media posts.

As most such films are thrillers, the premise works to a certain extent before it becomes ludicrous,  Mercy, being an uninspired rip-off Minority Report, is no exception.

However, this is not the first time director producer Timur Bakmambetov [ Wanted,  Abraham Lincoln : Vampire's Hunter ] has taken inspiration from a Steven Spilberg movie.

Last year, he produced a version of War of the Worlds, reframed within the confines of screen life.

Yes, Bekmambetov has a penchant for the genre. In fact, if you've seen any screen-life film - Unfriended : Dark Web, Searching, Missing, R/J [ a modern version of Romeo and Juliet], Profile [ an adaptation of Anna Erell's nonfiction In The Skin of a Jihadist ' or CTRL - the chances are that Bekmambetov has a hand in it, either as a producer or director.

Mercy, though, sits a little above every other title in the list.

The main leads are Chris Pratt and Rebecca Ferguson. Pratt plays a detective conveniently named  Chris, framed for the murder of his wife Nicole [ Annabelle Wallis ] and Ferguson is Judge Maddox, his AI.

Pray For Mercy : Timur Bekmambetov's Mercy is bearable for the first 20 minutes, but things quickly turn mediocre.

The World Students Society thanks Mohammad Kamran Jawaid.