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Mercy

1996, Movie, R, 85 mins

Mercy: Review

MERCY
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Arrogant millionaire lawyer Frank Kramer (John Rubinstein) thinks he has everything: money, power, success and prestige. His rude wake-up call is the kidnapping of his daughter (Rhea Silver-Smith), whose abductors seem as interested in humiliating him as getting the ransom money. Unable to admit that the situation is out of his control -- and getting more so all the time -- Kramer defies the FBI, ignores the entreaties of his ex-wife, baits the kidnappers and refuses to accept his own increasingly apparent responsibility for what has happened. This low-budget drama is shot in the gritty, artless style of New York-based crime thrillers of the '70s and aspires to be a morality play about the collision of indifferent wealth and intractable poverty, which rub shoulders daily in Manhattan. But writer/director Richard Shepard -- whose THE LINGUINI INCIDENT was a painful exercise in forced whimsy -- can't quite make it work. Kramer's descent into the urban abyss starts off well, but by the time he's down in Times Square buying a gun from a menacing, African-American transvestite, he just looks like a dyspeptic old white guy whose idea of hell is having to talk to perverts of color. Though Shepard claims he was inspired by the real-life kidnapping of a childhood friend, the plot distinctly resembles the old Glenn Ford drama RANSOM -- though Shepard's picture beat the Mel Gibson remake into theaters by a week. leave a comment
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