Memorable, crazy movie

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

The beginning of this was interesting, though we've see other "Ransom gone wrong" films before (Ransom, High and Low). But this quickly went south and never came back.Sam Rockwell was good but both his dialogue and screen time seemed purposefully short. The "Ruby" character was played well enough for the viewer to buy her as genuinely crazed, though there is little pity felt for her once the full story is learned. The daughter stands out as one of the best performances in the VERY few lines she has, Also the maid was well played, and her dialogue important and tense without sounding phony or trite.The biggest problems i felt were 2. Firstly that the main character was NOT a good person and this wasn't reinforced in a way that made you either despise him or empathize with him in spite of his shortcomings. The director clearly couldn't ably spend so much time focusing on the character's plight in trying to reclaim his duaghter from the kidnappers and still portray him as overall despicable.The viewer is left feeling that even though he did something truly bad that no one really cares.Secondly is that the last 20 minutes of the film are ABSOLUTELY, COMICALLY BAD. BAD BAD BAD!The main character sinks into a despair (which wasn't explored well enough) and ends up in the ghetto buying drugs he's never tried and then ends up in the care of a truly crazy man. Here's the toss-up. I can't decide, myself, whether it was really bad writing or if they actually got a crazy subway guy to play the part of, well, himself.I say this because most of the actual street crazies i've run into in my life (and i seem to attract them like a magnet) are loud, self interested and their craziness is usually completely boring. They seem to more often be stringing together words that make no sense together or railing diatribes about ideas which they themselves haven't fully thought out. Like they're randomly talking just to be noticed. Such is the character we see at the end of this film. It's SO BAD we can't decide whether to laugh out loud or just push eject.I rented this one as a fan of Sam Rockwell's and wanted to see some earlier stuff. Whoever made this movie should NEVER BE ALLOWED TO USE A CAMERA AGAIN! Ever. No one wants to see what he's got to show, or hear what he thinks he's got to say.It was like watching spiders with half their legs pulled off trying to escape a glass bowl.That's all i have.

A film maker who succeeds in holding our attention firmly for the entire length of his movie and causing us to empathize with the characters, is doing something right. If he's done this on a clearly minuscule budget, all the more credit is deserved..Richard Shepherd's does all this with "Mercy". While it's not unlike many other kidnap dramas, it's executed with a sure hand and nicely played by all. John Rubinstein, not usually a lead actor, does very well in the part. Sam Rockwell is (yet again!) an incompetent small time criminal and all the other supporting parts are well portrayed. While extremely competent, ultimately there is not enough here to get too excited about, but Shepherd is a writer/director to watch out for.

i saw this on cctv movie channel,it's really a good film,at first i felt it was just a common criminal film about kidnap,but,i found it was more than crime as i finished seeing it,it showed the bad side of our society and human!..anyway,it's a good film......

this is some of the worst, most cliched writing i've seen in a while...terrible direction and horrible lighting and photography, not to mention the stilted acting, with the exception of the maid and sam rockwell. poor sam rockwell puts in an energetic performance only to be destroyed by how badly the shots were set up adn the editing...oh my god! what a boring, terrible, cliched film...the first 2 minutes lets you know...WASTE OF TIME AND MONEY!!! BORING! BORING! BORING!