Hitchcock in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

The plot premise of Mercilessly It seems to evoke the wet dream of Donald Trump's authoritarianism. In the near future, the United States, shaken by crime and civil unrest, decides to put the judicial system in the hands of an artificial intelligence that promises efficiency and, above all, speed. Everything goes smoothly until the main promoter of this system (a police officer played by Chris Pratt) is accused of murdering his wife and has ninety minutes to convince the AI ​​(played by the infallible Rebecca Ferguson) not to execute her.

From this suggestive starting point, screenwriter Marco van Belle crafts a refreshing cocktail of elements from the universe of Alfred Hitchcock, from the idea of ​​the falsely accused to the paralyzed voyeur of Rear Window –the protagonist of Mercilessly He must prove his innocence by exploring a multitude of virtual "windows" from a terrifying defendant's chair. Meanwhile, Russian director Timur Bekmambetov (responsible for remake of Ben-Hur) accepts the difficult challenge of generating interest and excitement with the audiovisual waste of the digital world: video calls, instant messaging, video surveillance cameras... And if the proposal ends up working it is thanks to the film's refusal to fall into Manichaeism in the study of the confrontation between human morality and the objectivity of AI.