Back to the Future
1985
In the near future, a detective stands on trial accused of murdering his wife. He has ninety minutes to prove his innocence to the advanced AI Judge he once championed, before it determines his fate.
Timur Bekmambetov
Chris Raven
Judge Maddox
Nicole Raven (née Martin)
Jacqueline 'Jaq' Diallo
Britt Raven
Robert 'Rob' Nelson
1/25/2026
6/10
When detective “Raven” (Chris Pratt) wakes up, he’s shocked to find himself strapped to a chair and somewhat hungover. All he has for company is the rather assertive image of “Judge Maddox” (Rebecca Ferguson) on a screen before him telling him that he has been arraigned on a charge of murdering his wife (Annabelle Wallis) and is now subject to the automated “Mercy” justice system. This involves AI evaluating multiple sources of information and working out the probability that he committed the crime. His rate is up around the 97% mark and so it is looking like he is toast. Of course he denies the crime, and so he is given ninety minutes to review all the evidence, footage and interviews and to carry out some questioning of his own to try to prove that he is innocent. What now ensues sees him backtrack over a weekend where we discover some home truths about this policeman and he discovers some about himself, his marriage and his best friend. I recently watched “Incident” (2023), a real-time documentary that illustrates just how much of our lives are truly being filmed and recorded. Add to that, this fictional but not entirely improbable society that legally obliges us all to sign up our devices and social media accounts to a cloud that leaves nothing private or beyond the reach of the authorities, and we have something of the Orwellian about this plot. That’s the premise, and for a while our captive Pratt and his electronic judge/jury and juicer make for quite a compelling critique on just where things might be going if we don’t stop relying on the internet for everything we do. Sadly, though, once the story is teed up for us, the batteries run out fairly quickly and this descends into a fairly formulaic drama that we’ve all seen loads of times before, before a denouement that hadn’t any of the courage of it’s earlier, much more menacing, convictions. It’s a perfectly watchable, wordy, television thriller, but I left the cinema feeling really quite underwhelmed.
1985
1968
1982
2000
1998
1984
1997
1984
1979
1987
1984
2006
1998
1997
2024
1975
1944
2016
1979
2025
