Chris Pratt Says Being Locked in a Chair Made MERCY One of His Toughest Roles Yet
Chris Pratt is used to playing heroes who run, fight, and crack jokes under pressure. His new movie Mercy flips that comfort zone upside down.
In the upcoming AI-driven murder mystery, Pratt plays Chris Raven, a detective accused of killing his wife who has just 90 minutes to convince an artificial intelligence judge of his innocence before he’s sentenced to death.
The twist is that Raven spends nearly the entire film restrained in a chair, forced to rely on words, expressions, and raw emotion instead of action.
That setup pushed Pratt in ways he hadn’t experienced on set before. “It was definitely a challenge, and something I hadn't done before,” Pratt tells GamesRadar+.
In Mercy, Raven’s trial unfolds through Los Angeles’ mandatory “municipal cloud,” a system that pulls evidence, memories, and witness statements directly from everyone’s backed-up devices. All of it appears on a screen in front of him, placing the audience inside the same confined perspective as the accused detective.
The film is directed by Timur Bekmambetov, known for his screenlife approach, which means the technical demands were just as intense as the emotional ones.
Pratt explains: “Really long takes, very technical in terms of what we were shooting: what I could see that the audience would eventually be able to see, and what I couldn't see that the audience would actually be able to see, understanding where various eyelines were, but all keeping it in one take and not being able to cut. Long scenes of dialog, vacillating through various states of emotion and adventure and tension and drama.”
Opposite him is Rebecca Ferguson as Judge Maddox, the AI authority overseeing Raven’s fate. While the story leans heavily into futuristic tech, the physical reality of the shoot stayed brutally grounded. Raven is cuffed at the wrists and ankles throughout the trial, locked into a chair with almost no freedom to move.
“It was a big challenge. But then restricting yourself by having your hands and feet locked and being stuck in a chair all day, it was a challenge,” Pratt adds.
Instead of pushing back against those limitations, Pratt leaned into them hard. He even asked the crew to make the restraints as real as possible.
“I asked them to actually lock it so I could wrestle against it. And also, you know, if I was sweating and it was itching my face, I couldn't scratch it. I thought those restrictions might lend themselves to a better performance.”
This isn’t an action-heavy thriller. It’s a pressure cooker that lives and dies on performance, tension, and the unsettling idea of an algorithm deciding who deserves to live. The movie is getting bombed with bad reviews, but I actually enjoyed it.
Mercy hits theaters this weekend.