Week five

Something's fishy in Norway for Team Houston on The Amazing Race

Sunday night means it’s time to check in with Team Houston, The Amazing Race’s Michael and Kevin Wu from Sugar Land. They’ve run quite literally hot and cold the past four weeks, landing in fourth place last week in the stark, but beautiful, Swedish Lapland.

Episode five begins on the border of Sweden and Norway, with teams instructed to cross the border and head for Narvik, Norway. Team Houston begins about a half hour behind the first place team, doctors Nat and Kat.

In this episode’s opening interview, Kevin explains that, since he’s away at college now and will be leaving home once he graduates, this is a chance to spend time and travel with his father. This interview is a good example of why the team is so endearing, as Michael makes a funny face of triumph when Kevin talks about moving out and Kevin makes an equally hilarious face of “Eww” as Michael explains this is their last chance to “eat together, sleep together, and pee together.” Fans of Kevin's YouTube Videos will know that Michael will make sure that pee is clear.

At the top of the mountain they find their next clue, instructions drive to Skjombrua bridge. They also find the offer of a fast forward, but decide against it, figuring an earlier team was probably already on their way.

The fast forward is a task any team can perform, but the first team, and only the first team, to complete it gets to head straight to the pit stop. The doctors take it since the Nat half of the team is afraid of heights. Unfortunately, the Kat half of Team Doctor has been a vegetarian for 22 years and their fast forward task is to eat an entire sheep's head. They accomplish this fairly quickly and are sent to the pit stop and out of the episode mid-way through.

At Skjombrua bridge, the roadblock requires one team member to have “strength, stamina, and guts.” Kevin takes this, as Michael self-deprecating jokes he has none of those qualities.

In their interview with CultureMap before the season began, Michael admitted he is afraid of heights, so any high roadblock challenges will probably always go to Kevin.

Using a mechanical ascender, Kevin rappels from the bridge down to the water, sets down on a waiting boat to get the next clue and then ascends 130 feet back up to the bridge deck. The trip down is accomplished by most racers, including Kevin, swiftly but the ascend back up requires both upper and lower body strength. Kevin makes it up first and the team leaves the bridge in second place, since elsewhere Team Doctor has already devoured their sheep’s head.

Team Houston next drives to what The Amazing Race route designers simply call a “remote field” in Harvika, Norway for their detour challenge: Bike or Boat.

For Bike, the teams must ride mountain bikes along a mountain course and back. The scenery is beautiful, but the course is not difficult enough to jostle racer placement, nor is it funny.

Team Houston picks Boat instead, because Kevin is worried that the bike course might be too much for Michael. This is not a good choice for race placement, since it will take longer than Bike, but it is much more entertaining for viewers. Once on a trawler, they have to use a map to navigate for the captain until they find a marked spot on shore. There our team climbs a slippery embankment and up a fairly steep hill to a summer lodge. The catch is they have to carry two 20 pound cods and a chainsaw. If they’re replicating some kind of summertime Norwegian cod/chainsaw ritual with this task, Phil Keoghan never says. It does allow Michael ample opportunity to tease his son about his fishy smell.

Though they arrived at the detour first, the two other teams who chose Bike complete their task faster, so Team Houston falls behind by choosing Boat, but they seem to have a good time. They also get a little lost on the way to the pit stop, Ankenes Marina. They arrive in fourth place, ending exactly as they began this leg.

This Norwegian leg didn’t provide much drama, unless viewers find a vegetarian eating sheep eyes particularly Shakespearean, but it did reenforce Team Houston as one of several fun, good-natured teams. With the exception of the interchangeable bickering-couple teams, who blur together now, the Amazing casting department did a terrific job this season.

Next week, Russia, and it looks like someone gets to wear a babushka. We hope it’s Michael.

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Movie Review

Chris Pratt fights for his innocence in popcorn thriller Mercy

Photo courtesy Amazon Content Services

Chris Pratt in Mercy.

It seems like every other movie set in modern times being released these days includes either a reference to or a plot revolving around artificial intelligence. In the real world, the benefits of the technology compete with its downsides, but when it comes to movies A.I. is almost always seen as a threat, including in the new film Mercy.

The audience is thrown headlong into the slightly futuristic story involving LAPD Detective Chris Raven (Chris Pratt), who finds himself strapped in a chair in a sparse room, being told that he is on trial for killing his wife. Turns out he’s in a court dubbed “Mercy,” which is overseen by an AI judge named Maddox (Rebecca Ferguson). By the rules of the court, Raven has 90 minutes to provide reasonable doubt of his guilt, or he will be executed on the spot.

Raven is in a multi-pronged quandary: Not only does he believe he’s innocent despite a trove of evidence pointing to his guilt, but he’s also the poster boy for the law enforcement side of the equation, having arrested the first man who went to Mercy. Anger and disbelief for Raven turn into acceptance, which then turns into him tapping into his detective skills, scrutinizing every shred of evidence the court provides him in a desperate attempt to save his own life.

Directed by Timur Bekmambetov and written by Marco van Belle, the film is a relatively propulsive thriller despite having a so-so story and even worse acting. The film is told in real time (with a few fudges here and there), so the concept alone of a man trying to prove his innocence in a short amount of time provides good intrigue. Bekmambetov’s use of digital elements as Raven scrolls through files or calls potentially exculpatory witnesses like his partner, Jaq Diallo (Kali Reis), keeps the film visually interesting.

On the other hand, the swift viewing of videos and documents by Raven, not to mention the high degree of cooperation by Judge Maddox, opens up more than a few plot holes. The filmmakers try to explain away a few leaps in logic by having Raven falling off the sobriety wagon the night before, but they can only use that excuse for so long. They also have the AI judge experience technical glitches along the way, errors that seem to point toward a wider conspiracy until they’re completely forgotten.

More than anything, it’s difficult to get over the wooden acting of Pratt and the misuse of other usually reliable actors. Pratt has no real presence, especially when he’s confined to a chair, so any emotion he tries to conjure up comes off as contrived. Ferguson is done no favors by a role that shows only her upper body and has her alternating between robotic and oddly sympathetic. Reis earned an Emmy nomination for True Detective: Night Country, but has little to do here, a fate that also takes out Chris Sullivan as Raven’s AA sponsor.

If you’re okay with turning off your brain for a little while, Mercy can be an enjoyable watch. But if you find yourself scrutinizing why characters make the odd decisions they do, or the wishy-washy way the film approaches AI in general, then you’re likely to find the whole thing lacking.

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Mercy is now playing in theaters.

movies film chris pratt rebecca ferguson movie review