'Mercy' Review: Chris Pratt’s Screenlife Thriller Is a Hyperactive Mess

The second and hopefully last in a series of recent films featuring a popular actor sitting in a chair for 90 minutes, Mercy has much in common with last year’s Amazon commercial-cum-Ice Cube hostage tape, War of the Worlds. Not only are both films lamentable throwaways, but they were both produced by Timur Bekmambetov in an attempt to further indulge his bizarre fascination with screenlife thrillers, where audiences stare at a big screen to watch someone else stare at a smaller screen. The genre has only resulted in one straight-up terrific film — 2018’s Searching— and Mercy will only further lower its batting average. It also won’t do much for Chris Pratt, who bravely fast-talks his way through a ridiculous, self-serious crime story while shackled to a chair. It’s a challenge that limits an actor who has gotten by mostly on his charm to using only facial expressions to convey seriousness of purpose.

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