Last week a video of Ben Affleck talking in depth about A.I. in the film industry went viral. Affleck’s assessment of the commercial and financial impact of A.I. on his business was sober and measured, which actually made his pronouncements startling when set against the background of severe unease at how artificial intelligence will totally destroy movies as we know them. But what he’s right about he’s right about right now: Bad movies are bad not because of A.I. itself, but because filmmakers are lazy, a deficiency that A.I. is not necessarily going to exacerbate. Case in point is this movie, which happens to be about A.I. and could have been written by an early version of ChatGPT. The screenwriting credit goes to someone named Marco van Belle, a journeyman filmmaker with a bunch of mid-level titles in his resume. Whatever other talents van Belle possesses, he knows his crime-action cliches inside-out. There is no character depth or plot intricacies in this movie: it’s all geared toward second-by-second intrigue. Everything serves the action, as if programmed to do so.

The setting is Los Angeles in the near future, after the LAPD has adopted an A.I. judicial system that tries murder suspects whose chances of being convicted rise above a certain line of probability. The suspects have 90 minutes to make their case, without legal representation, before an A.I. judge. Verdicts are rendered immediately and sentencing is carried out, which in the case of capital crimes means instant, painless death. Van Belle explains this system breathlessly during the opening credit sequence so that when the movie properly opens on a suspect already confined to a chair in front of the A.I. judge screen we’re as discombobulated as the suspect, a cop named Chris Raven (Chris Platt), who is accused of killing his wife but claims he remembers nothing. This is a calculated move by van Belle and the veteran action director Timur Bekmambetov, who doesn’t let up on the pace for a minute. Judge Maddox (Rebecca Ferguson), who for some reason is given a name and a countenance as if that makes her A.I. pronouncements more emotionally acceptable, flatly explains the procedure and gets down to business as Raven splutters and pleads his innocence while the clock, in real time, ticks down his 90 minutes. The relentless courtroom proceedings are augmented by quick cutaways to “witnesses” outside the sealed courtroom whom the judge can call up instantly, including other cops, Raven’s distraught daughter, and neighbors, all of whom seem to think Raven is guilty because they’re convinced the A.I. system is infallible. In fact, Raven was one of the law enforcement agents who stumped for the system, dubbed Mercy, because too many criminals were slipping through the conventional law enforcement process. Hey, we can all relate, right?

The mystery itself—did he or didn’t he?—becomes ludicrous by degrees because van Belle’s assigned task is to use the A.I. gimmick to jam as many plot twists into 100 minutes as humanly (or inhumanly, if we’re really talking machine learning) possible, and he succeeds on that level. The adrenalin rushes keep coming in waves thanks to Bekmambetov’s penchant for overdoing everything, whether it be a gunfight with drone-perched cops or a freeway chase featuring a bomb-laden tractor trailer. This movie, as they say, has everything and yet leaves you feeling as if you’ve just binged on a mountain of junk food: unsatisfied and slightly nauseous. 

By contrast, the action in the Korean neo-noir Project Y is measured and focused, its milieu no less contrived than that of Mercy but more emotionally substantial. Like most Korean crime movies, melodramatic excess is as central to its appeal as the requisite brutal violence and credible motivation. The director, Hwan Lee, has confessed to being a Tarantino acolyte, and QT’s fondness for sharply delineated characters is apparent even if they lack the moral nuance that Tarantino is famous for. And also like Tarantino Hwan and his co-writers highlight women protagonists with the kind of moxie movies traditionally ascribe to men. In this case it’s a pair of BFFLs, Mi-seon (Han So-hee), a nightclub hostess, and Do-gyeong (Jeon Jong-seo), a driver-for-hire, who are fixtures of the Seoul entertainment underworld ruled by ruthless men with no feelings for anything but their wardrobes and stashes of excess loot.

One such stash is the target after Mi-seon, who has saved a bunch to buy a flower shop that will provide an escape from the demimonde she and Do-gyeong are stuck in, gets scammed out of the money she’s set aside for a Seoul apartment by the realtor who fooled her and her fellow hostesses to use him as their agent. On one of her runs, Do-gyeong overhears the wife of a powerful club owner (Kim Sung-cheol) tell her host club lover where her husband has hidden loot he’s accumulated through bets on fixed basketball games and decides she and Mi-seon can dig it up before the host and his slimy accomplice do. Of course, once they get their hands on the loot, which also includes a bag of gold bars, they themselves become targets, not only of the host and his slimy accomplice, but of the club owner and his sadistic, leather-clad female goon. Complicating matters is Do-gyeong’s mother, Ga-yeong (Kim Shin-rock), a junkie and veteran hostess who is closer maternally to Mi-seon than she is to her own daughter. The two friends tell her about the gold because they want her to escape Korea with them to Japan, but Ga-yeong has plans of her own.

Outside of the touted female buddy element, Project Y has no distinguishing features that sets it apart from other similarly flexed up Korean crime flicks, though Tarantino would likely be impressed, especially by the violence. But be warned: almost all the women in the movie get brutalized mightily, and while that brutality is designed to make the payback sweeter, it’s difficult to sit through and you have to wonder how many viewers find it thrilling in and of itself.

Mercy now playing in Tokyo at Toho Cinemas Nihonbashi (050-6868-5060), Toho Cinemas Hibiya (050-6868-5068), Shinjuku Wald 9 (03-5369-4955), Shinjuku Piccadilly (050-6861-3011), Toho Cinemas Shinjuku (050-6868-5063), Toho Cinemas Shibuya (050-6868-5002), Toho Cinemas Roppongi Hills (050-6868-5024).

Project Y, in Korean, now playing in Tokyo at Toho Cinemas Hibiya (050-6868-5068), Toho Cinemas Shinjuku (050-6868-5063).

Mercy home page in Japanese

Project Y home page in Japanese

Mercy photo (c) 2025 CMTG

Project Y photo (c) 2025 Plus M Entertainment, Climax Studio and Wowpoint