It’s an ambitious and intriguing premise: In 2029 Los Angeles, Chris Pratt’s Detective Chris Raven wakes up cuffed to a chair in the Mercy courtroom and has no recollection of how he got there or why he’s there.

It’s an empty space except for Rebecca Ferguson’s AI Judge Maddox on screen in front of him.

She coldly explains that the cop has just 90 minutes to prove he’s innocent of his wife’s murder before the chair releases a fatal pulse to execute him.

What follows is an almost real-time experience as Chris uses the AI’s database to view CCTV footage, digital reenactments around crime scenes and phone witnesses.

Filmed for IMAX with 62 minutes of Expanded Aspect Ratio, the format as a little to the intensity, but not much else.

Although having Pratt’s face so close in my POV was a little too much even in the middle of the audience, so I moved back a row.

You’d think the plot would be a fun murder mystery with a detective looking for the real killer, while also thematically commenting on the rapid rise of AI and the moral complexities around it. Sadly, it’s much more tedious than that, and the 100-minute runtime feels much longer, and not in a good way. Even the big reveal was met with a yawn.

At the end of the day, putting a short movie in IMAX and expecting the public to go to what is essentially a forgettable streaming flick (that will soon be on Prime Video) was a real risk and one that is unlikely to pay off at the box office. A shame, because if it had had a better script, this could have been the unique theme-park-style “ride” it was clearly aiming to be.

Mercy is out now in cinemas.