‘One wrong turn can cost you everything’
Mercy Road is a 2023 Australian psychological crime thriller film about a father who is searching for his missing fifteen-year-old daughter; he receives chilling calls from a mysterious man claiming to know his daughter’s exact location. As he follows the increasingly unhinged instructions, he learns exactly how far he’s willing to go to save his child.
Directed by John Curran from a screenplay co-written by Jesse Heffring and Christopher Lee Pelletier. Produced by Gary Hamilton, Daniaile Jarry, Penny Karlin, Michelle Krumm, Alex Proyas and Ying Ye.
Executive produced by Jack Christian, Ryan Hamilton, Jesse Heffring, D.J. McPherson, Louise Nathanson, Clay Pecorin, Christopher Lee Pelletier and Anna Vincent.
The Arclight Films-Filmology Finance-Hianlo co-production stars Luke Bracey (Point Break), Huw Higginson, Toby Jones (Captain America: The Winter Soldier), Alex Malone, Martha Kate Morgan and Susie Porter.
Plot:
Pushed to the limit and on the edge of sanity, single father Tom (Luke Bracey) learns just how far he must go to protect what matters most to him. His daughter Ruby has been abducted, and to save her, he must carry out a series of tasks as instructed by a disembodied, psychopathic voice on the other side of a phone call. Battling against near-impossible odds, Tom realises that the true ransom demanded of him is a piece of his own soul…
Reviews:
” … repetitive, deliberately obscure and simultaneously blindingly obvious. Even the title gives away the purgatorial aspect to the thriller. Luke Bracey mostly yells, swears, begs, breaks down – all with no nuance […] It’s hard to pinpoint what serves the film least: the script, the muddy visuals, Bracey’s inability to carry what is essentially a one-person drama.” Alliance of Women Film Journalists
” …Mercy Road is one of those films you have to go with. There’s no point nitpicking about realism or logic because it emphasises atmosphere, emotions, momentum, suspense. And, perhaps unexpectedly, what its various elements might symbolically represent. The shirking of real-world locations – including the striking use of fog – boosts the surreal atmosphere and adds to the feeling of a motion-propelled nightmare…” ★★★★ The Guardian
“Let’s put aside the why of ChatGPT-ing an action ‘thriller’ like this, rather than leaning into Miller’s Mad Max-charged muscle car grunt, itself an Oppenheimer-level ethical debate: just because you can, should you? And if you are going to flick cinematography out the window like a discarded fag butt, at the very least, you want these unreal visuals to blow us away.” ★ Screen Hub
Release:
In Australia, Mercy Road premiered at the Melbourne Film Festival. In the US, Well Go will release the movie theatrically in select locations on October 6, 2023, and on Digital on October 10.
Trailer:
US trailer:
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