The film ultimately tries to be too many things at once. The amount of time that the script took to get produced, as well as the lag it took for the film to finally be released following its festival premiere, isn’t shocking when viewing the final product. The screenplay, which was written by Joe Barton, bounced around development hell for nearly a decade, and only got made after the two stars came onboard as producers. The film came about through the desire of real life friends Page and Mara to do a project together, after struggling to find roles that were suitable for both of them. This is already a lot of plot to take in, but things get more complicated still when Lucy starts to fall in love with Mercy (Kate Mara), a young woman from the other side of the protests whose family is very involved in pushing for the death penalty in cases of murder. They maintain the belief he was falsely accused, and are trying to get him released with the help of Weldon (Brian Geraghty), a greasy lawyer whom Martha is sleeping with. The three siblings have a personal connection to the cause, with their own father (Elias Koteas) on death row for allegedly stabbing their mother to death. The film follows sister activists Lucy (Ellen Page) and Martha (Amy Seimetz), who travel around the United States in an RV with their little brother Benjamin (Charlie Shotwell), protesting the death penalty in front of prisons where inmates are about to be executed. The film premiered three years ago as a Gala Presentation at TIFF, and is finally resurfacing now with a Canadian digital release, which sort of tells you everything you need to know about what sort of dreary indie film this is. This is what happened to me with My Days of Mercy, a lesbian romance about the death penalty that doesn’t really take sides on this contentious issue. It’s a strange experience to watch a film that does almost nothing for you only to go online afterwards to find out that it has a high score on Rotten Tomatoes.
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