The Chris Pratt and Rebecca Ferguson sci-fi thriller flopped against Avatar: Fire and Ash in theatres but has quietly become a streaming fixture months later.
Seven weeks. That's how long Mercy has sat inside Prime Video's Top 10, according to the streamer's own listing for the film, and for a movie that struggled to make its money back in theatres, that's not a small thing.
Mercy opened earlier this year with a story set in a near-future Los Angeles where something called Mercy Court decides the fate of accused criminals in 90 minutes flat. Prove your innocence inside that window, or face execution. Detective Chris Raven, played by Chris Pratt, is the one on trial here, accused of stabbing his wife Nicole to death. His history of drinking and the fallout it caused with Nicole and their daughter Britt doesn't help his case. Rebecca Ferguson plays Judge Maddox, the AI tasked with deciding whether he lives or dies.
Director Timur Bekmambetov, the man behind Wanted, built a cast around Pratt and Ferguson that includes Kali Reis as Jacqueline Diallo, Annabelle Wallis as Nicole Raven, Chris Sullivan as Rob Nelson, Kylie Rogers as Britt Raven and Kenneth Choi as Ray Vale.
The theatrical run told a messier story. Mercy actually debuted at No. 1 in North America with $11.2 million, briefly knocking Avatar: Fire and Ash off the top of the charts after Avatar's six-week reign. But Avatar wasn't done. It climbed right back, and Mercy never recovered the ground it needed against a film still pulling crowds months into its release. On a reported $60 million budget, that opening wasn't enough to carry the movie through.
Critics were unsparing. Mercy sits at just 24% on Rotten Tomatoes from 185 reviews, the kind of number that usually buries a film for good. Audiences disagreed, at least the ones watching at home. Prime Video users have rated it 4.1 out of 5, a gap between critical and audience reception wide enough to notice.
That gap is doing a lot of work now. Streaming has a habit of rescuing films that didn't land in cinemas, and Mercy is turning into one of those cases where the home audience simply showed up late. Whether that momentum holds into an eighth week, or a ninth, is the only question left. For a movie Avatar buried at the multiplex, outlasting expectations on a different screen counts as a win.
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