How wonderful it is to see this fine actress carry a film and carry it so beautifully.

Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

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 was a sordid and dreary mess. I needed a shower when it was over. It goes something like this- some socialites are murdered and a woman homicide detective is assigned to the case. She discovers that the victims belonged to an underground lesbian society, and she befriends an associate of the group who may have relevant information. Since the detective is an attractive woman, of course she is horny and intrigued (which reveals much about Hollywood and its psychosis about women). What's surprising is that none of this is very sexy or interesting, just depressing and yucky. Ellen Barkin gives a respectable performance as the lead detective, and Julian Sands provides unintentional laughs as a cross-dressing psychiatrist, which is why it escapes a one-star rating.

I got about halfway through this movie and was very disappointed. It was just flat out boring and completely unrealistic. I can get past being unrealistic in a lot of movies, but not when it's supposed to be a crime drama thing. The evidence collection and interview processes were just plain oddball. I started fast forwarding to see how it ended. And then got bored with that and just turned it off and returned it. The main character, played by Ellen Barkin, just wasn't believable at all. Peta Wilson acted very well in this film, but her character was way out there and there wasn't anyone for her acting talents to play off of that made it work.

POSSIBLE SPOILERS - PROCEED WITH CAUTION!If Basic Instinct were a half-way decent film, it might almost be Mercy - a sick by stylish stew of rough sex, serial murder and lesbian chic. In place of the odious and homophobic detective played by Michael Douglas, this film gives us the feisty and fabulous Ellen Barkin. As a hard-bitten homicide cop investigating the S&M killings of glamorous bisexual women, Barkin is not a sleazy and self-righteous voyeur like the Douglas character. Rather, her close emotional involvement with one of the suspects (Peta Wilson) forces her to question her own sexuality, to iron out a few of her own hidden kinks.Whether or not Barkin's character is a long-term lesbian, it's easy enough to see how she could fall for Wilson. This Australian model bears an eerie resemblance to Gwyneth Paltrow, but differs from the Oscar-laden star in two vital ways. Firstly, she has innate elegance and glamour. Secondly, she can act. (Sorry, but nothing and nobody could make me sit through Shakespeare in Love a second time!) As an unofficial 'den mother' to this coven of deeply twisted ladies, that gorgeous and golden-haired sex god Julian Sands dons mascara and a frock as Dr. Dominick Broussard - a kinky psychotherapist who dresses up in drag to seduce his lesbian patients!As you've probably gathered by now, nobody involved in the making of Mercy could ever be accused of 'good taste'. Scenes of bondage and razor-slashing in the S&M dungeons of Toronto (of all places!) are amazingly graphic for a mainstream movie. There's a sub-plot involving paedophilia, plus a deranged ex-Vietnam sniper who acts out 'pretend' murders for kicks. Perhaps it's all for the best that director Damian Harris has a quirky style akin to that of David Cronenberg - visually elegant, yet chilly and restrained. This sense of distance undercuts any hint of sleaze or sensationalism. Our involvement in the warped psychology of these characters is always stronger than our morbid curiosity about 'who is doing what to whom'.If you have a strong stomach and an interest in the 'dark side' of human sexuality - or if you're a fan of Barkin or Sands, both superb actors who have been chronically underrated and underused - then Mercy is a film you must see. If not...well, maybe you'd be happier watching Shakespeare in Love.David Melville