'Mercy': Lost in a digital daze

   In the movie Mercy, Rebecca Ferguson portrays a character named Judge Maddox, an AI creation that operates with algorithmic rigidity.

   Mercy benefits from a bit of topicality as it tries to determine whether AI is capable of gathering data, assessing facts, and determining the probability of guilt or innocence faster and better than any jury could. 

    Considering its attempts to be thematically weighty, it's disappointing that Mercy quickly devolves into one more scattershot thriller. A potentially rich premise becomes an excuse for a fragmented, digitally enriched collection of familiar plot elements and intermittent action.

    Shackled to a chair throughout most of the movie, Chris Pratt plays Chris Raven, a Los Angeles cop accused of murdering his wife (Annabelle Wallis). Given 90 minutes to prove his innocence, Raven has access to all the information Mercy, the movie's digital justice system, has gathered.

    Aside from an understandable desire to avoid execution after his 90 minutes expire, Raven wants to convince his teenage daughter (Kylie Rogers) that he didn't murder her mother.

    Director Timur Bekmambetov, working from a screenplay by Marco van Belle, uses Raven's agitated inquiries to weave his way through segments that provide hurried tours of Raven's troubled marriage, his alcoholism, and his troubles with anger management. 

     The plot also loads up on red herrings, introducing the possibility of massive damage thanks to stolen chemicals, a potential bomb attack, and the revenge-seeking suspects who populate an overly complicated plot.

    Mercy unfolds in a near future that includes flying motorcycles and assorted techno junk. A crime-riddled Los Angeles has been divided into sectors where the city's law-abiding residents are separated from those who might threaten them. Just what we needed, more dystopia.

     Watching the immobilized Pratt act from a chair from which Raven sees the judge and the projections the system shows him eventually becomes repetitive. Most of the time, Raven seems to be sifting through evidence to prove his innocence. It almost feels as if he's watching the same movie we are -- only he squirms more than we do.

    Themes about the oppositional struggle between AI and humans are swallowed by a plot that relies on a surfeit of twists that feel arbitrarily introduced during the movie's third act, which suggests that maybe humanity and AI can coexist.

    Neither gut instinct nor logical rigor is required to conclude that Mercy, which moves quickly through its 100-minute running time, squanders its chance to be taken seriously.

         

Aliens rule in comic helping of sic-fi

   

   When you see the aliens in Landscape with Invisible Hand, you'll probably giggle. These are not imposing creatures who gobble up humans like candy. They're goofy-looking visitors with paddle-like hands. Their doughy loaf-like bodies suggest what beings might become should they cede all their vital functions to technology.

    Somehow (never mind how) these aliens -- known as the Vuvv -- have become the rulers of Earth, selling their presence as a high-tech boon to humanity even as they engage in all manner of entrepreneurial exploitation, replacing people with technology whenever possible.

   Working from a YA novel by M.T. Anderson, writer/director Cory Finley explores class hierarchy and the commodification of ... well ... nearly everything, especially art.

    Basically, the human characters dominate the story.

    Asante Blackk plays Adam, a high school student who aspires to be an artist. Adam lives with his mother (Tiffany Haddish), a lawyer who has been put out of work by the Vuvv, and his sister (Brooklynn Mackenzie). 

    Dad (William Jackson Harper) did a disappearing act shortly after the aliens arrived.

   At school, Adam meets Chloe (Kylie Rogers). Chloe, her brother (Michael Gandolfini), and her father (Josh Hamilton) are homeless. 

   Sensing a kindred spirit, Adam invites Chloe and the rest of her family to move into the basement of his mother's house.

   Finding a place to live represents an upgrade, but the visitors occupy a lower rung of the house's social pecking order. Conflict looms when resentment begins to supplant gratitude.

    For their part, the aliens, convinced of their superiority, seem bemused by Earth's inhabitants. Because they don't reproduce sexually, the aliens are fascinated by human romance and want to observe it up close -- for both edification and entertainment. 

    Looking for extra cash, Chloe and Adam become members of a courtship broadcast team; i.e., stars of their own reality show. The more aliens who tune in, the more Chloe and Adam earn. They need the money and they like each other anyway — at least at the outset.

    Later, the Vuvv place one of their number in the household to further study the human institution of marriage. This leads to a bizarre mock wedding between the Vuvv visitor and Haddish's character.

     Finley eventually focuses attention on the commodification of art.  When Adam's work becomes popular, Vuvv eyes light up. They'll reward him handsomely and turn his art into a replicable commodity. Will Adam sell out or stick to his principles?

     Blackk gives the movie’s keynote performance, a quietly expressive rendering of teenage awakening. Rogers keeps pace.

     Finely scores points for inventiveness and for making a sci-fi movie that plays down super-sized effects. His depiction of aliens becomes part of a larger joke about exploitation and the class fractures it breeds.

     The movie's themes stay close to the surface and Landscape doesn't quite attain breakthrough velocity. Its amusements may be intermittent but they're enough to keep things going.

    The title, by the way, would be great for a one-person art show.