User Reviews

OK let's start with a confession, I really liked this movie. Yes, I feel a little ashamed to say it, I watched what you might call a Lesbian slasher movie and loved it, but I think I loved it for all the right reasons. At least they gave us reasons to like it. One of course is Peta Wilson who is dazzling and quite seductive.

The seduction was not all Wilson, however, it was heightened by some very nice tight shots of `casual' and not so casual touching. A hand on back, dropping lower as it goes back to holding hands, dropping in for a light touch on the small of the back, always moving making Ellen Barkin's character comfortable with the touch. This movie really knows how to tease and create suspense.

That is not to say that it is the best script, there is a tendency in this movie to drop broad plotlines in lieu of character development. I remember early into the movie going `Oh, Peta Wilson does Sharon Stone' blond, bi, killer. What saves the film is that it transcends each movie that it rips off. Peta is not Sharon Stones Basic Instinct character. The doctor is not the doctor from (e-mail me if you really need to know it is a spoiler to name the movie and this one is too good to spoil).

Quibble time. What is it with these picture window shots. The psychiatrist in this movie does his work in a room with a wall sized picture window. Albeit he has privacy, but I sure wouldn't want to be talking about myself in that room. (I also Watched the Astronaut's Wife (now there is a really lame movie with a good little twist at the end) the hospital room has one of these windows. Recovery open to the world, not for me thank you)

Ellen Barkin, what is up with her? Her character was out of place in that her gratuitous sex scene seemed to be just that. Who she picks up makes no sense and has no continuity.

Finally a word about the ending. It makes sense. It is what you do for someone you love when there is nothing left to do. You do what they couldn't, you take care of something that was bothering them, and in the process you do the right thing. Maybe the movie could have ended at the final murder scene, but the ending was satisfying because it is what I would have done for someone I loved.

This contains some spoiler information, but the movie is not worth watching anyway...

Why Ellen Barkin and Peta Wilson agreed to be a part of this debacle by writer-director Damian Harris is beyond me. The story is full of unrealistic police investigating techniques, which includes going to a party with a suspect and inviting that suspect over to your house and getting intimate with them. The tale also features a male psychiatrist who seems to have nothing but female clients - and he sleeps with them all.

Even more over-the-top is the notion that the female victims to a horrendous S/M crime belong to a large, yet secret, group of S/M lesbian executives.

Full of bad editing and continuity errors, the film is sterile in all of its ritzy locations - including Barkin's detective salary apartment. And the lame dialogue is fit to put one to sleep.

Damian is a bad writer and a bad director. He tried and failed miserably to create a noiresque atmosphere at times. Furthermore, he couldn't get Ellen Barkin to give 110%. I firmly believe she realized the film was pathetic and gave up trying.

Standouts were Peta Wilson, who wasted time studying with a Dominatrix for the part. The highly under-rated character actor, Marshall Bell gave his absolute best as always.

And since Damian couldn't deliver on any level, it was hard to feel emotion for any of the characters.

Most importantly, he doesn't know much about the real world of BDSM and chose to create the typical "Hollywood Reality" of gorgeous men and women who are perverted and dangerous.

Save your time, money and braincells and pass this one by.

(the spoiler bit is only in the last paragraph)

Be warned, if you're scouting for a hot title, this one is just too much of a cold fish to be anything like that, or if you're scouting for a dark title, this one is too mild to be anything like that either. Good performance by Ellen Barkin, but if you carry an erotic torch for her, go to the sea, the SEA OF LOVE, ah, those were the days. Peta Wilson? I was, upon first sight, disappointed, but, yeah, she is something to see, especially as the film progresses. She's a very complicated character though. So any fun? Quite frankly, few and far between, with lotsa yuck getting into the way. And it's kinda dorky yuck, cause convincing it's not, the dead bodies are clearly prop department works of 'art.'

Getting slapped with a wet fish through the face, that's what this creepy movie is. I don't mean creepy in a shivery way. I mean creepy as in yuck. Corpses galore. Naked corpses. Bloodied naked corpses. Close-ups of bloodied naked corpses. This movie caters to the vulture mindset.

Quite distasteful, leaves a bad taste, though well-filmed. Unsettling story-line is not what I am referring to. Plot holes and lots left unexplained.

A dark psychological thriller loaded with psychobabble, inane Freudian ramblings that has never held any water but is being devoured like sweet-cakes at a church fair, because it tells people what they want to hear. In the World as it is, we are all very, very different, and no one damn universal truth exists. We are all very strange bunnies, so damn the case files, just because Person A acted like this ten decades ago, doesn't mean everybody is going to follow suit, but there is a whole industry of psychologists who can afford to live life up high in their own ivory towers charging rent to other people's castles up there in the sky.

Much of the motivation doesn't even make sense, for instance, the sniper scenes, I fail to understand, obviously because it is just a bunch of junk.

I originally saw the downloaded trailer and figured it to be a good bet. Well, it's kinda really really a letdown in many, I'd say, most ways. Visually not nearly as exciting as it promised to be. Wallowing about in stupid badly-presented psychological disorders. The swimming pool scene was well done, however. Danielle Marie Straub, no speaking part, unforgettable in her aquamarine bathing suit, the very symbol of innocence, plays the molested child with a dismayed questioning expression that speaks volumes.

It was an expensive purchase for me. All well and fine if you can see it for the price of a rental, or on cable, whatever you guys do, but I went the whole hog.

Now, the spoilers:

Julian Sands. Getting eaten alive. Yells out campy-voiced. Oh go home man! Karen Young, who is quite good at times, is absolutely inadequate in that crucial scene where she approaches drag- outfitted Dr. Broussard. That has the feel of a first attempt. And what a monumental waste writing Peta Wilson out of proceedings long before the end. Some unforgivable mistakes.

This movie is half "Basic Instinct on Prozac" and half "really retro take on lesbianism".

Ellen Barkin portrays Detective Catherine Palmer, the weirdly lethargic lead investigator into a series of murdered women. The women are all left naked, hand across their chests, covered in bite marks and stab wounds. Searching for the killer, Catherine meets Vicky Kittrie (Peta Wilson), a mysterious woman who leads the detective into a world of lesbian social clubs, sadomasochism and childhood trauma. She also encounters Dr. Broussard, (Julian Sands), a psychotherapist who sleeps with his patients and has another rather odd habit. Catherine spends most of the film wandering around in a fog as bodies pile up and the story delivers clues to her on a silver platter, until we arbitrarily get a climax that is definitely different from what you get in most sex crime dramas.

I would guess that Mercy is supposed to be an erotic thriller. It's about sex and there's certainly a goodly portion of nudity, but the movie is decidedly unsexy for the most part. There are a couple of girl-on-girl moments of seduction that are provocative, but most of the sex is unpleasant and most of the naked bodies are displayed in a detached, clinical manner. Sex as pleasure is in the minority and sex as compulsion, repulsion, loathing and self-loathing is in the majority.

As far as the acting goes, Peta Wilson is fine and Wendy Crewson and Karen Young does as much as you can expect with their roles as patients of Dr. Broussard. Broussard himself is really more of a prop than a character, but Julian Sands tries hard. Ellen Barkin, though, gives a truly strange performance. Catherine Palmer seems to be either half-asleep, drugged or in some sort of emotional shock for most of the story. She also doesn't act anything like a cop. She plays Catherine more like a reporter, but not an aggressive beat report, more like one who writes those features for the Sunday style section. The story tries to suggest some depths to her character, but she'd have to be awake for the audience to care.

Mercy is based on a book and I don't know how good of an adaptation it is, but I can tell you that it's poorly written for a movie. I t's about investigating a murder but there's no real mystery at work here. Catherine (and the audience) don't have to piece things together to figure out whodunit. S he doesn't really discover things, so much as stand by and observe things that happen without her involvement. Catherine is kept at a distance from the emotional or dramatic actions in the story, which combined with her sleepy persona makes this a very sedate thriller. The first half of the film is also filled with scenes with Dr. Broussard and his patients that seemingly don't have anything to do with the murder mystery, but you automatically know that it's all going to tie together somehow. So when it does, it's not surprising or engaging. It's predictable and mechanical.

I should also warn any actual lesbians out there to be wary of this film. The story STRONGLY associates same sex attraction among women with fathers sexually abusing their daughters, as in one results from the other. So, if you don't want to be told your orientation is caused by mental and emotional sickness, you should probably skip this movie.

Mercy isn't a stupid movie. However, that's about the strongest praise I can give it. It's a (not so) erotic thriller where Ellen Barkin gets her name above the title, but is the only major female character who never gets naked. If that sounds like something you'd really be interested in…maybe you need to see a psychotherapist.