This movie is half "Basic Instinct on Prozac" and half "really retro take on lesbianism".Ellen Barkin portrays Detective Catherine Palmer, the weirdly lethargic lead investigator into a series of murdered women. The women are all left naked, hand across their chests, covered in bite marks and stab wounds. Searching for the killer, Catherine meets Vicky Kittrie (Peta Wilson), a mysterious woman who leads the detective into a world of lesbian social clubs, sadomasochism and childhood trauma. She also encounters Dr. Broussard, (Julian Sands), a psychotherapist who sleeps with his patients and has another rather odd habit. Catherine spends most of the film wandering around in a fog as bodies pile up and the story delivers clues to her on a silver platter, until we arbitrarily get a climax that is definitely different from what you get in most sex crime dramas.I would guess that Mercy is supposed to be an erotic thriller. It's about sex and there's certainly a goodly portion of nudity, but the movie is decidedly unsexy for the most part. There are a couple of girl-on-girl moments of seduction that are provocative, but most of the sex is unpleasant and most of the naked bodies are displayed in a detached, clinical manner. Sex as pleasure is in the minority and sex as compulsion, repulsion, loathing and self-loathing is in the majority.As far as the acting goes, Peta Wilson is fine and Wendy Crewson and Karen Young does as much as you can expect with their roles as patients of Dr. Broussard. Broussard himself is really more of a prop than a character, but Julian Sands tries hard. Ellen Barkin, though, gives a truly strange performance. Catherine Palmer seems to be either half-asleep, drugged or in some sort of emotional shock for most of the story. She also doesn't act anything like a cop. She plays Catherine more like a reporter, but not an aggressive beat report, more like one who writes those features for the Sunday style section. The story tries to suggest some depths to her character, but she'd have to be awake for the audience to care.Mercy is based on a book and I don't know how good of an adaptation it is, but I can tell you that it's poorly written for a movie. I t's about investigating a murder but there's no real mystery at work here. Catherine (and the audience) don't have to piece things together to figure out whodunit. S he doesn't really discover things, so much as stand by and observe things that happen without her involvement. Catherine is kept at a distance from the emotional or dramatic actions in the story, which combined with her sleepy persona makes this a very sedate thriller. The first half of the film is also filled with scenes with Dr. Broussard and his patients that seemingly don't have anything to do with the murder mystery, but you automatically know that it's all going to tie together somehow. So when it does, it's not surprising or engaging. It's predictable and mechanical.I should also warn any actual lesbians out there to be wary of this film. The story STRONGLY associates same sex attraction among women with fathers sexually abusing their daughters, as in one results from the other. So, if you don't want to be told your orientation is caused by mental and emotional sickness, you should probably skip this movie.Mercy isn't a stupid movie. However, that's about the strongest praise I can give it. It's a (not so) erotic thriller where Ellen Barkin gets her name above the title, but is the only major female character who never gets naked. If that sounds like something you'd really be interested in…maybe you need to see a psychotherapist.

This film is an interesting thriller that probes the after-hours private lives of well-to-do corporate women whose interests are unusual sex with other women. When some of the ladies turn up dead, the police step in, headed by Ellen Barkin as a jaded, shopworn and streetwise cop. Barken gets drawn in deeper into the erotic world she is discovering by a young woman and slowly pieces together the mysterious murders. There are red herrings and the plot twists and turns are more revealing in the film's home stretch. Barkin is as cool and wends her way through this erotic underground and the men portrayed in the film are shown in a poor light. Peta Wilson is sympathetic as the woman who guides Barkin through the maze of sex bars and clubs, and their chemistry on screen is sensual and suggestive. Barkin's trademark crooked grin is nearly absent in this picture owing to the subject matter but she is still a treat to watch. The music and cinematography are very good.

...than you easily spot the biggest fault of the movie. What was the motive? The details of the murders were used, but never explained. I guess the team got too much into the atmosphere, which is great, but the story is definitely lacking. There is no thread to follow. I guess if that was done properly, the movie would've lasted a bit longer, but it would've been worth it, at least for me.Casting is very good, I loved Wilson as the vulnerable Vicky.Not much more to say, really. But I really wish they've concentrated a bit more on the less obvious.

This one is a bit more stylish than the average erotic thriller and Peta Wilson is a very sexy presence but it plays like they lost a few pages of script somewhere. Subplots come in and out of nowhere, the connections between some of the characters are murky and the killer's motivation is unclear to say the least. Maybe they could get away with this in a porn version, but here some more clarification is needed.