
In
Mercy, which premieres in theaters on Friday, in the near future, Detective Chris Raven (Chris Pratt) is accused of murdering his wife and stands on trial, the judge the artificial intelligence he championed, Judge Maddox (Rebecca Furguson). With no memory of what happened before he woke up in the Mercy Chair, he is given 90 minutes to comb through all available surveillance footage to prove his innocence. However, if he’s found guilty, he will be executed instantly.
SciFi Vision recently spoke with star Chris Pratt about being restrained in the chair and how it both helped and hindered his ability to portray the detective. “The sense of claustrophobia, the sense of feeling trapped, being isolated in a room, a cavernous space, this cacophonous volume that I was confronted by, nothing other than digital screens, that's what my character's going through,” he explained, adding that it was similar to what he himself was going through as he filmed the scenes.
Pratt was joined by director Timur Bekmambetov who explained that although Pratt was in the chair for a large portion of the film, there is also a lot of evidence around him on the screen. “[It’s] a full of action, full of events of his life, because he's in the chair, but all his backstories are around him, and we see him fighting, chasing,” said the director.
“[I]t's very much an action forward film,” added Pratt. “Just, rather than being the person who's perpetrating the action, I'm sort of subject to witnessing the action along with the audience.”