July 26, 2014 -- Luc Beeson is a director in the Jerry Bruckheimer mold whose movies mostly hover around the C to C+ range, like “The Fifth Element” and “Arthur and the Invisibles.” “Lucy” is more like one of his more popular films, “La Femme Nikita,” a totally daft, but sexy action film, starring Natasha Romanoff, I mean Scarlett Johansson, fresh off her fully nude appearance in “Under the Skin.”
Lucy (Johansson) is forced to deliver a locked briefcase full of drugs to a sleazy company executive, who forces her, and a drug addict, to submit to what appears to be illegal drug trials. A packet of the drugs is sewn into her body apparently as a demented scheme to transport the drugs to another country, but the packet ruptures and Lucy is deeply affected by the drugs, making her into a deadly killing machine with unlimited intellectual potential. So the message of this movie is clear. Take drugs and you can become a super-intelligent badass.
The idea for the story is actually based on an old urban legend, that humans only use 10 percent of their brains. This is a myth. Although most of us never achieve our full potential, for many reasons, we do use all of our brains, pretty much all the time, which is really sad when you consider what many people think. This story is also somewhat similar to the great Daniel Keyes science fiction short story and novel, “Flowers For Algernon,” which has been made into plays, movies and even dance performances. It is also similar to “Limitless,” but it is almost a direct copy of Stephen King's “Lawnmower Man.”
Once Lucy starts down this path of drug-induced brain improvement, there is no turning back. She becomes less and less human and moves on to the next stage of human evolution. In one of the movie's few poignant scenes, Lucy kisses a kindly cop, Pierre Del Rio (Amr Waked of “Syriana”) and tells him that she needs him to remind her of what she once was. Despite all this brain power, Lucy doesn't know what to do with herself, so she asks a scientist, Professor Norman (Morgan Freeman) what to do, and he tells her. Well, you know, if anybody would know what to do, it would be Morgan Freeman.
As Lucy's brain becomes more and more powerful, she is able to control things like phones, TVs, electricity with her mind, without the need for a remote control. She is also able to see and intercept radio signals, read minds and control other people's minds. Eventually, she is able to move objects with her mind. With all this power, she could make short work of her enemies with her brain power, but she prefers to use guns. That's more sexy. We end up with the usual high speed chases and bloody shootouts expected in an action movie.
The bad guys in the film appear to be Japanese thugs of the Yakuza variety, who go about killing large numbers of people in public with absolute impunity. There are no cops to be seen anywhere. Inexplicably, Lucy lets some of them survive, even though she could get rid of them with her brainpower, so there is at least one left to kill right up to the end of the film.
This film is very slickly made with really good production values and excellent special effects. It looks great. The story is stupid, but it is more than just an action movie. It does, in a limited way, explore the idea of human potential, evolution, and what it means to be human. In short, despite many plot holes, some of which are noted above, this film is a little more ambitious than I expected it to be. The acting is solid, especially by Johansson, who really carries this film alone most of the time. On her next film, her salary goes way up, given the big box office success of this film. This film rates a B.
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