Director Timur Bekmambetov is generally quite polarising, though there isn’t much that is polarised about the response to Mercy, which seems to be universally negative. Chris Pratt stars as a man accused of murdering his wife in a futuristic Los Angeles and he has 90 minutes to prove his innocence to an AI judge (improbably played by Rebecca Ferguson – what is she doing in this?) or face execution. Whatever you think about the films, they have enticed some decent scores and this one comes courtesy of Ramin Djawadi. It is fair to say that it took me a few years to really warm to his music but I did find a few in the end that have been impressive, especially when he’s allowed a sense of fun to creep in to the music in scores like The Great Wall and Uncharted.
I’d like to say that Mercy falls into that category, but I can’t because it doesn’t. The film evidently called for music that is taut and claustrophobic and that’s what it got. Things do not start promisingly with a series of noises opening the score, but the opening track does feature a simple but reasonably effective rhythmic device. In “Burner Phone” we get to a much more promising moment – the sound of a phone ringing is incorporated into the music – I say it’s more promising because there is some chance you might think it’s your actual phone ringing and therefore stop the music playing. To be fair, it’s not all bad – “Soul” features a compelling electronic soundscape and “Clear Your Name” has a sense of humanity to it – but the album doesn’t work for me as a listening experience divorced from the visuals. It’s oppressively miserable by design for most of its fairly long run time, lacking any warmth, and features an incredibly monotone sonic palette. It’s very simplistic – in particular the action material, which is just bleeps and moans – and just isn’t for me.
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