A man has 90 minutes to prove his innocence during an AI-expedited murder trial in Mercy, a slick new sci-fi thriller from director Timur Bekmambetov (in his first Hollywood outing since 2016’s Ben-Hur) premiering in Prague and cinemas worldwide this weekend. The premise instantly draws us in, and solid execution maintains our interest for the majority of the movie, but a third act implosion sinks the whole enterprise and makes us question our own good taste for enjoying it in the first place.

In an era where most of us interact with artificial intelligence on a daily basis, we walk into these kinds of things with certain expectations. Mercy‘s painfully outdated interpretation of AI feels less like The Creator, Ex Machina or even M3GAN and more like 90s thriller Virtuosity: by the time Rebecca Ferguson‘s algorithm praises Chris Pratt‘s “gut instincts” and shares a meaningful nod, it has severed any sense of technological realism.

Mercy stars Pratt as L.A. police detective Chris Raven, who helped advocate for the titular technology: an AI-powered criminal justice system that serves as judge, jury, and executioner, and gives defendants 90 minutes to plead their cases before an AI judge delivers a verdict and carries out the sentence. Death sentences are instantly delivered through lethal injection, conveniently located in the chair on which defendants are restrained.

But it’s not all bad: the Mercy system bypasses any need for warrants, and gives both the AI judge and the defendant access to phone records, traffic cameras, police databases, and any other kind of evidence that could possibly be available in the cloud. Defendants should have everything they need to prove their case—save for a lawyer—but the all-knowing algorithm should already know whether or not they’re guilty.

That puts Raven in a bind when he wakes up from a hangover and a head injury before the digital Judge Maddox (Ferguson), who tells him his wife Nicole (Annabelle Wallis) has been murdered and there’s a 97.5 percent chance that he’s the killer. Raven can’t quite remember what transpired, but he knows he isn’t a murderer, and has exactly 90 minutes to get his guilt rating below 92 percent, or else he’ll be executed on the spot.

This is essentially The Fugitive, except Raven isn’t trying to prove his innocence and track down the real murderer while he’s on the run: he’s doing it all while restrained to a chair in a darkened room. Good thing he’s an actual detective, unlike the homeless men he’s put in front of the Mercy system in the past.

The setup immediately draws us in, and director Bekmambetov does a great job of ratcheting up the tension as Raven scrambles to not only save his own life, but solve his wife’s murder. As he scrambles to untangle the mystery before the clock runs out, he calls AA sponsor Robert Nelson (Chris Sullivan), daughter Britt (Kylie Rogers), and partner Jaq (Kali Reis) to help him put the pieces of the puzzle together.

All Mercy needs is a sensible resolution to succeed in B-movie terms. Maybe Raven finds the real killer, and succeeds in proving his innocence before the Mercy system. Maybe the killer gets away, and Raven’s execution becomes the impetus to bring the whole system down. Or maybe Raven really is the killer—and his inside knowledge allows him to game the system and get away.

After 75 minutes of an interesting and well-executed sci-fi murder mystery-cum-courtroom drama, any reasonable resolution would seal the deal. But instead, the utter nonsense delivered in the final act of writer Marco van Belle’s script sends this whole movie off the rails.

Key test in these kinds of credulity-testing whodunnits: walk back the events of the narrative from the point of view of the killer. What Mercy asks us to believe has transpired is not only completely baffling, but it also forces the film to completely switch gears, abandoning the premise that made it interesting in the first place.

Still, Mercy has enough technical polish to keep it watchable, buoyed by Ramin Djawadi’s propulsive score, sleek cinematography from Khalid Mohtaseb, and proficient VFX work (love that police dronecopter). Bekmambetov stages the action well, and both Pratt and Ferguson give fun performances that lean into the script’s silliness—even if Maddox is written with far too much empathy to convincingly register as artificial intelligence.

In the end, Mercy is a thriller that builds a smart, timely hook and sustains it for just long enough to make its collapse especially frustrating. The film asks provocative questions about truth and justice in the AI age of only to abandon them in favor of a finale that doesn’t withstand even minimal scrutiny. It’s a cautionary tale about blind faith in algorithms—a lesson that could have also benefitted the filmmakers.

Fat Mike doesn’t do birthdays.

So it was probably just a coincidence the NOFX retrospective at the Punk Rock Museum in Las Vegas last weekend took place on his birthday.

“My wife is going to spank my a— really hard 59 times,” Michael Burkett, a.k.a. Fat Mike, said on the roof of the museum as the sun was setting and the lights of Las Vegas were coming on. “Then she’ll do it again with a cane, and then with a paddle. That’s my kind of birthday.”

That’s an answer NOFX’s fans have come to expect from the front man known for his scabrous humor and irreverent lyrics. Fat Mike has made a career out of letting it all hang out and not taking himself too seriously, often courting scandal along the way.

From insulting country music fans in 2018 after the Las Vegas massacre the previous October, to convincing the crowd at SXSW in 2010 that his alter ego Cokie the Clown had peed in the tequila he’d just shared with the audience, Fat Mike has always been a provocateur.

But that’s just one side of the performer.

As the owner of Fat Wreck Chords, the label that put out most of NOFX’s material, as well as albums by scores of other bands, a lack of seriousness was a luxury he couldn’t afford.

“It’s a lot of responsibility,” he admitted with a sigh of relief now that the band has stopped touring and the label has been sold to Hopeless Records. “But being out of NOFX now is wonderful. I can do so many different things that I’ve been wanting to do for a long time.”

Despite his ambivalence to birthdays, the museum, which was co-founded by Fat Mike in 2023, pulled out all the stops for a “this is your life”-style birthday party.

Two rooms on the 12,000-square-foot museum’s second floor displayed ephemera documenting the accomplishments of a grimy little punk rock band that stayed in the shadows of peers like Offspring, Green Day and Blink-182, but remained completely independent of major label influence — from its humble beginnings in 1983 to its final show in 2024.

Photos and fliers lined the walls, road cases were stuffed with memorabilia, and the sound of early demos played on actual tape recorders filled the space. “It’s the most substantial exhibit we’ve ever had,” said Vinnie Fiorello, one of the museum’s co-founders.

Meanwhile, down on the main floor, Mike’s former bandmates Aaron “El Hefe” Abeyta and Eric “Smelly” Sandin led guided tours through the museum, telling stories about their unlikely success as punk rock lifers. Later that afternoon, they gathered in the museum’s event space for a sold-out roundtable discussion.

The event kicked off with the trailer for the upcoming NOFX documentary titled “Forty Years of F— Up,” directed by James Buddy Day, and in typical NOFX fashion, they uploaded the wrong file. The showing had to be aborted after a few shocking scenes of bandmates bickering and Fat Mike blasting lines of cocaine.

Talk about a teaser.

For the discussion, Fat Mike, El Hefe and Smelly were joined by their longtime crew who are like a second family to the band. They shared irreverent stories and raucous laughter. At times, you could almost forget about the elephant in the room.

Almost.

Smelly read from a prepared statement addressing the reason why one of the bandmembers, rhythm guitarist Eric Melvin, wasn’t present.

Just a few hours after the final show of their final tour, Melvin’s lawyers served Fat Mike with papers accusing him of “legal and financial malfeasance.” He broke off contact with the band and directed all communication to go through his counsel.

After the roundtable, Fat Mike went out on the museum’s rooftop, feeling sad and vulnerable.

The acrimony that bedeviled so many bands that NOFX avoided for 40 years had finally caught up with them.

“We never had a f— argument, ever,” Fat Mike explained. “Things got a little sketchy during COVID, because people got desperate and we couldn’t play. But before that, we were all best friends. It was so beautiful. It wasn’t like other bands.”

Not being like other bands was the secret to NOFX’s success. While other bands chased record deals, NOFX stayed indie. When the kind of skate punk that NOFX helped pioneer went mainstream, Fat Mike didn’t tone down his act to appeal to a wider audience. He was willing to wager that, if they stayed true to their fans, their fans would stay true to them.

“When we were kids … we made ourselves targets. By the cops, by the jocks, by everybody. Why did we do that? Why did we make ourselves targets? I don’t really know why. It felt good, and it was like, ‘I don’t want to live like you.’”

That determination to live on one’s own terms, no matter how gnarly or weird other people thought you were, is what fueled Fat Mike and NOFX, and judging from the trailer, that hasn’t changed. That’s what Fat Mike means when he says, “NOFX is a completely authentic band.”

NOFX drummer Erik “Smelly” Sandin, left, and Aaron “El Hefe” Abeyta in the Punk Rock Museum.

(Melanie Kaye)

When members of NOFX were interviewed for the documentary, they were upset. Despite a wildly successful final tour, not everyone wanted the band to end and they spoke candidly about their feelings. Even though they were hard to watch, Fat Mike decided to include those scenes in the documentary.

He didn’t want to shy away from material that made him uncomfortable, including footage from a gory near-death experience he had after contracting a bacterial infection in his ulcer. “I’m on the floor and there’s blood and puke everywhere,” Fat Mike said, setting the scene. At that moment, he asked his wife to film him. “I think I’m dying, and I want my last words to be on camera.”

Even more shocking than the documentary’s content, is the way it will be distributed. You won’t be able to watch it on a streamer, download it off the internet or purchase a physical copy. The only way you can see it will be by getting off the couch.

“You have to go see the movie,” Fat Mike explained. “We’re playing it at over 100 theaters around the world once a month.”

Inspired by midnight screenings of his favorite movie, “Rocky Horror Picture Show,” Fat Mike went to Cisco Adler, whose father Lou Adler co-produced the camp classic that made Tim Curry a legend, to devise a bold plan for showing the documentary. Alamo Drafthouse Cinema and Landmark Theater are on board to make the dream a reality.

“I want our fans to have a place to go,” Fat Mike said.

It’s a reasonable DIY strategy that feels completely radical. NOFX in a nutshell.

The documentary includes new songs performed by El Hefe, Fat Mike and Smelly, and they’re creating merchandise for the screenings like popcorn buckets, chocolate bars and NOFX 2-D glasses.

“It’s gonna be a party,” Fat Mike promises. Would you expect anything less?

“Forty Years of F— Up” will premiere in Austin during South by Southwest on March 15 and 16 and at the Nuart Theater on March 19 before opening worldwide on April 10.

Jim Ruland is the author of “Corporate Rock Sucks: The Rise & Fall of SST Records” and is a columnist for Razorcake Fanzine, America’s only nonprofit independent music magazine.

‘The Choral’

Directed by Nicholas Hytner (R)

★★