Cribbing rather liberally from 1988’s Die Hard is a concept that will not die within the action genre anytime soon, it seems, and Mercy does so again – though, to the film’s credit, director Tony Dean Smith does cast a woman this time around in the role of an underestimated and stoic protagonist whose dormant capabilities as a soldier/fighter/what-have-you are activated by a situational threat. This is, by now, an old and rather tiresome standby to everyone but those still sold by the admittedly propulsive set-up of a villain or two and their countless goons being used as floor mops by someone they hardly could have anticipated. To succeed, it comes down to diverging from our expectations to some degree, and in such an overwhelmingly male-dominated film genre, it’s nice to see a female action star take center stage.
That’s the good news: Leah Gibson is utterly convincing in the role of Michelle, a nurse whose history as a military doctor – and the reticence to share that detail with anyone – comes in handy when members of an Irish mafia threaten an armed and hostile takeover at her hospital, all while Michelle’s son Bobby (Anthony Bolognese) has taken a detour to stay in the waiting room until the end of her shift. The degree to which her past spills over into the future via flashbacks that aren’t overtly expository or aggravating is also a welcome change of pace in Alex Wright’s screenplay. Then again, nearly everything involving the Irish mafia is laborious to the point of monotony.
That’s the bad news. As relatively convincing, if not enormously surprising or nuanced, as Michelle’s story is, we simply cannot and do not care about the various ways in which the Quinn brothers, Sean (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) and Ryan (Anthony Konechny), and their father, Patrick (Jon Voight, sporting a serviceable Irish dialect and giving a more committed performance than he has in some time, at least), threaten violence at the hospital while juggling a major turncoat in their midst. We definitely grow tired of their petty quarrels with each other and with the interchangeable members of their team (Patrick Roccas and Mark Masterton). We may need forgiveness upon nearly forgetting the entire presence of Ellis (Sebastien Roberts), the special agent in charge of their apprehension and arrest, by the end of the movie, considering he spends almost 80% of it pacing up and down a single room in the hospital.
Of course, most of the action is dedicated to Michelle, which is exactly the right decision whenever Smith can think of a moment to interrupt the circular nature of the stuff involving the Quinns. Gibson barely breaks a sweat here, in a performance that perfectly balances the desperation of a mother to get back to her kid and the military training that leads to an effortless takedown of nameless and faceless baddies. The uniform nature of her style, though, has the same effect as always in the least of these movies, in that the final confrontation looks a lot like every other one that precedes it. There is little genuine danger in Mercy, because we all know that everything will turn out for the best. The bad guys get their due, and if that counts as a spoiler, well, here’s the last 35 years of action cinema as proof that it’s not.
Photo courtesy of Paramount
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