On Jan. 23, “Mercy” was released in theaters. The main character, Chris Raven (Chris Pratt), wakes up in an electric chair, given 90 minutes to prove his innocence to an Artificial Intelligence (AI) judge against killing his wife, but he only has a blurry idea of what happened the previous night.

The movie starts with Chris in the Mercy courtroom, no one but him and AI Judge Maddox (Rebecca Ferguson) in the room. At first, Chris was panicked and angry at being put in the Mercy courtroom because he works for detectives and is “on the same side” as the AI. He didn’t understand why he had been arrested, and when he tried to remember what happened the night before, he couldn’t remember anything about killing his wife or being arrested. He yelled at Judge Maddox, trying to convince her that he wasn’t supposed to be there, but when faced with the evidence, he wasn’t sure what to believe.

The Mercy court gives him multiple resources to prove his own innocence to Judge Maddox, who is judge, jury and executioner. He is allowed to call people for information and is given completely unrestricted access to anything documented online. It takes a while to see Chris using these resources to their full potential, but once he does, it is very interesting to watch.

Mercy wasn’t a bad movie per se, but it could’ve been written better. I was originally excited to watch an anti-AI movie, but it didn’t live up to my expectations. The film went from AI neutral to AI propaganda halfway through, trying to present it as thoughtful instead of fact-based and unfeeling. In my opinion, AI should’ve been represented as emotionless, not willing to get involved with emotions from humans, but Judge Maddox responded empathetically to moments of distress from Chris. I felt this was added to make AI look better to people watching, instead of actually giving Maddox an accurate characterization.

Overall, I didn’t hate the movie. It was interesting to see the mystery of what really happened get uncovered, although I wasn’t a fan of Judge Maddox’s character. I would suggest this movie to someone who likes mysteries and plot twists, but doesn’t care much if a story uses unrealistic factors.