Rating of
2.5/4
"Lucy" by Yojimbo
Yojimbo - wrote on 01/16/15
An ordinary young woman who is press-ganged into becoming a mule for organised criminals is exposed to the effects of the experimental drug she is carrying and develops super-human powers. Luc Besson's latest is essentially Limitless crossed with Crank as Scarlett Johansson engages in a race against time to reclaim the drug and punish her abductors before her body burns out. Quite how gaining full control of your brain would turn you into a telekinetic, mind reading, gravity defying terminator is never quite clear, despite the fact that Morgan Freeman pops up at regular intervals to explain the plot to the audience. So yes, Lucy is very, very silly, even by Besson's standards and his pretensions to "exploring the nature of human evolution" which deliberately (and somewhat embarrassingly) echo 2001: A Space Odyssey, are little more than a parade of pretentious but pretty pictures. Having said that, Scarlett Johansson is as watchable as always, Min-Sik Choi makes an amusingly psychotic villain and Lucy plays to his strengths in that it's economically brief, action packed, breathlessly paced and never takes itself too seriously.
