Mercy Streets starts off in a very interesting way, with a priest confessing to killing his brother. Then the movie flashes back 3 days. At this point, we see the same man being released from prison. His name is John (David A.R. White). Upon leaving the prison, he's picked up by another man, Rome (Eric Roberts). Rome is obviously a very bad man. He shows up at the jail to pick John up with a dead body in the trunk. Seriously, can you get much more demented than that? Anyway, Rome tells John that they have a job to do, and he has to have John in on it. The job is a con. They are supposed to trade 25 million in perfect counterfeit money for 1 million in real money. But they're not counterfeiters, so it's all a con. Well, John decides to doublecross Rome and the other partner, TJ (Robert LaSardo), and just run with the real money, all 50 grand of it.
While all of this is happening, John's identical twin brother Jeremiah (David A.R. White) is living a life very opposite from John's life. Jeremiah is about to be ordained as a priest. His roommate Dan (Lawrence Taylor) is a cop. He's got a beautiful girlfriend named Sam (Cynthia Watros). Basically Jeremiah's life is calm, perfect, and just the way he wants it. Unfortunately for him, John is about to change it all.
When John has to get away real quick, the only place he can think of is to turn to his brother than he hasn't seen since childhood. John manages to show up at Jeremiah's house at about the same time Jeremiah gets back from jogging. Of course, TJ and Rome show up at just that time too. They kidnap Jeremiah thinking that they have John. John sees all this, but does nothing to stop it since he hates his brother due to a childhood incident. From here on out, the brothers will have to switch lives until they can get this entire mess straightened out. Can a criminal manage to act like a priest? Will the priest manage to be a criminal?
Mercy Streets starts out quite exciting. The plot and the setup are very good. Unfortunately that only lasts for the first hour or so. The ending of the movie gets a bit preachy. They really hit home the moral of the story more than they make the movie exciting.
There are also special features on the DVD for you to watch. There are quite a lot of deleted scenes. Personally, I think some of them should have been left in there as they answered questions that were left open, but I guess there's just not time for everything. The Making-of feature is entertaining as well.
Overall, Mercy Streets isn't a bad movie, but I wish the end would have been a little more exciting. I'm all for happy endings, but there needs to be some drama just to keep it interesting. It is interesting to watch an action movie with no cursing, no death, and not much violence, and really I didn't miss that stuff. It's worth checking out if that's the kind of movie you're in the mood for.
