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.
Curran (whose work includes Australian films Praise and Tracks, and episodes of Eden and Bloom) has crafted a weirdly bold and hypnagogic experience, likely to divide audiences. I like it a lot as a creative example of a breathlessly on-the-run story, beginning in media res. It kicks off with Tom jumping into his vehicle and fleeing a crime scene then attempting to call his daughter. He can’t reach her but leaves a voicemail message. “Please, don’t go home,” he implores – one of many lines the film uses to hint at something dramatic with little context.
A livid work colleague calls, but Tom has other fish to fry. He listens to a voicemail message from Ruby’s school, stating she’s absent, then another from Ruby, who says, cryptically, “I just needed to talk to you about something.” When we think about the word “fragments” we often think in visual terms, but Mercy Road reminds us that fragments can apply just as much to words and speech. Gradually a picture forms of what’s happened, and what potentially will happen, via a chorus of clashing voices including Tom’s ex-wife (Alex Malone) and a police negotiator who believes Tom has kidnapped Ruby.
There’s also Captain McSinister, the supposed “associate” who claims to be “a mediator of sorts”, hissing instructions for the frazzled protagonist to follow. The dialogue of this disembodied fellow is a bit much, like a stock villain sent from central casting. I also never really believed the police were chasing Tom: the story didn’t need this aspect to keep adrenaline flowing.
But Mercy Road is one of those films you have to go with. There’s no point nitpicking about realism or logic because it emphasises atmosphere, emotions, momentum, suspense. And, perhaps unexpectedly, what its various elements might symbolically represent. Whereas Locke, another taut production told in and around a car (with Tom Hardy behind the wheel) unravelled in an ultimately clear-cut narrative, Curran is eager for us to consider the interpretative possibilities of the associate. What is the nature of Tom’s relationship with him? Who is he; what does he stand for?
We see little of the environments around Tom’s truck, partly because Mercy Road was shot on a virtual set, continuing a long film tradition of vehicle sequences providing the illusion of movement. The shirking of real-world locations – including the striking use of fog – boosts the surreal atmosphere and adds to the feeling of a motion-propelled nightmare, as if the protagonist is hooning through a tunnel deep inside himself, attempting to outrun the inevitable, fanging it down a highway for lost souls past the point of no return.
Several productions come to mind that contain broad similarities, particularly relating to single settings and telephone usage: Phone Booth and Locke, of course, as well as Buried, Brake and Sorry, Wrong Number. But Mercy Road is an original, darkly idiosyncratic thriller; I’ve never seen another quite like it.
Mercy Road is screening at Melbourne international film festival before its general release in Australia on 24 August
