Almost all of John Curran’s twitchy, moody thriller Mercy Road takes place inside a truck in close proximity to a flustered man behind the wheel navigating through a terrible crisis. This man is Tom – played with impressively high-voltage intensity by Luke Bracey – who has roughly one hour to save his 15-year-old daughter. He can do this only by cooperating with a very shady man speaking to him over the phone, known only by the very shady name “the associate” (Toby Jones), who delivers very shady lines such as “I know what you’ve done” and “I’m always watching and listening.”
The associate, like an angel of death, reminded me of Kiefer Sutherland’s role in the thriller Phone Booth: a disembodied voice breathing fire down the line and delivering the protagonist a spiritual reckoning, a sort of last chance to make good. Inspired, perhaps, by both Sutherland as well as Dennis Hopper’s cocky extortionist in Speed, the associate demands that Tom keep driving. This nifty embellishment connects narrative to pace, giving Mercy Road a cracking sense of momentum well-sustained across its muscular 85-minute runtime.
