Lucy (2014) | Movie Review

We’ve all seen enough comic book films where the main character starts out as your average Joe and eventually has something extraordinary happen to them that turns them into an above-average Joe.  In the case of Luc Besson‘s ‘Lucy‘, we are given a similar story, but with an added twist of attempting to add legitimate science to the mix.  I use the word ‘attempt’ intentionally because that is simply the best word I can use to describe the nonsensical direction the plot took.  Cue the Neil deGrasse Tyson fanboys smarter than me telling me I just ‘didn’t get it’.

Scarlett Johansson’s titular Lucy finds herself in an unfortunate situation.  The guy she has been dating for a week forces her to deliver a briefcase with unknown contents to a hotel lobby, where she is eventually knocked unconscious.  When Lucy awakens, she discovers that her lower abdomen has been cut open and that a bag of a very expensive narcotic has been placed inside her.  She and three other strangers must all smuggle the drugs or risk injury to their families.  While in custody, Lucy is kicked repeatedly in the gut by a guard, causing the drugs to leak from their otherwise sealed container still inside her and almost immediately give her abilities that no other humans possess.  As the film pushes forward, her abilities escalate along with the risk of her death.  So begins her quest for revenge against those who violated her as well as her search for the answers as to how to stay alive.

It is incredibly satisfying to watch Scarlett Johansson wield what are ostensibly super powers.  In most movies with this theme, the hero eventually reaches some kind of ‘Kryptonite’ plot element, followed by someone or something getting in their way to cause added drama to overcome before the climax.  Refreshingly, Lucy only gets bigger and more badass throughout the film, and it’s a lot of fun to see her handle her enemies with a literal flick of her hand.

Where the plot loses me is when her abilities begin to take such a radical turn that it is difficult to take it seriously anymore.  Since the idea is to convey actions that happen well beyond the scope of capabilities of the human brain, what transpires doesn’t make sense.  That is supposed to be the point, but the result feels like a cheap excuse for lazy writing. Lucy works for me in an action movie sense, but it suffers from trying to be smarter than it actually is to the point of being ridiculous.

Scarlett Johansson as the lead is most likely one of the bigger draws for this movie, but her performance is serviceable at best.  While I appreciated her ability to flip a switch from a scared, helpless girl to the Terminator, her intentionally robotic performance post- transformation felt tiring only a few minutes in.  Morgan Freeman’s appearance seemed to be an absolute waste of his immense talent as the majority of his performance was spent on a lectern teaching Exposition 101 on Lucy’s progression towards becoming a superhero.

From a production standpoint, I found myself constantly distracted by the odd choice of what was shown on-screen in between actual scenes.  Every few minutes, we are reminded of just how close to fully capacity Lucy’s brain has developed, which does more to give me a good understanding of how much of movie is left rather than move the story along.  There are also several random additions that seem completely out of place and time that were more distracting than entertaining.  The visual effects look, for lack of a better word, cheap and quickly thrown together.  Lucy, as a whole, could have used a good dose of polish before release.

Lucy was far from what I wanted in an ass-kicking action film starring a powerful female lead.  It had the potential to be off-the-charts awesome, but turned so convoluted that it made me want to rush home and watch other movies that, quite honestly, did it so much better.  Unfortunately, this film acts more as an advertisement for the upcoming ‘Age of Ultron’ where I look forward to seeing Scarlett Johansson with a bit more depth. Sadly, the entertaining action sequences in the second act just aren’t enough to make Lucy anything more than that.

If $10.00 is the full price of admission, Lucy is worth $4.00

 

Scott Clark
The Hollywood Outsider