Lucy

Lucy (2014)

Image From IMDB

A creepy dude tries to touch Scarlett Johansson’s tits and because she won’t let him he kicks the shit of her until she gains superpowers and fights Choi Min-sik. What a concept!

Lucy is about a woman who gains a higher use of her brain when a new experimental drug enters her system after she’s forced to be a drug mule. Instead of the 10% we can use, she eventually taps into the entire 100% and it gives her unfathomable abilities. She can see and feel everything. Do anything. And the first thing she wants to do is take revenge on the assholes who did this to her.

Lucy is a weird film from the offset and it doesn’t get any less weird as it goes. All the characters have a cartoon feel to them, and there’s some fantastic dark humour early on when Lucy and Mr. Jang (the always amazing Choi Min-sik) first meet. Morgan Freeman narrates about the evolution of the brain and we get plenty of snippets from National Geographical. No character quite knows what movie they are in, and that’s part of the movies charm. While Scarlett is in a sci-fi, Choi is in a Korean Gangster flick (taking place in Taipei and Paris.)

The story does kind of get lost at times as it seemed they didn’t overly know what to do with the characters after the initial set-up, but it still moves along ok. The first half of the movie is definitely a lot stronger and more focused than the second, but there’s stuff to enjoy throughout, especially anything involving Min-sik.

The central character of Lucy is badass, but it’s a difficult role to play. As the character opens up more of her brain she admittedly starts becoming less human and the performance therefore becomes purposefully more stunted. We are just not meant to be able to do and feel the things she can and Scarlett tries her best to show that. There’s a lot of potential drama within that idea, but the short runtime doesn’t allow for any of it to be explored as we need more action.

I liked the mess she was at the beginning. I wanted to see a little more of that character, but I guess it wasn’t her movie. Instead, she went from fuck-up to superhero in record time. Although in mentioning superhero I only refer to her powers as she killed wayyyyyy to many people in cold blood to be a superhero of any kind (even those modern ones)

Lucy is a decent little film. One of those movies with a big concept and some star power attached that gives something a go. Luc Besson is never going to make something bland and while this doesn’t deliver in a way something like Fifth Element does, it’s not meant to be that grand in scale. It’s a smaller film looking to do its thing, and I'd argue that it probably does. Not something I'd describe as must watch, but if you have 90 minutes spare and want to watch something a little wacky, I'd give it a go.