It’s been a while since we’ve seen Scarlett Johansson in the center stage. She’s been getting recognition lately thanks to her portrayal of Black Widow in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and smaller roles like her voice in Her. However, we get Lucy from writer Luc Besson, known for writing Taken, who gives Johansson her superhuman abilities.
The box office closed with 400 million dollar gross, but does that make Lucy worth seeing, or should you turn off 90% of your brain for this screening?
Lucy, a woman in her mid-20s, was studying in Taiwan, is tricked into working for a Korean drug lord by delivering a bag of a valuable drugs to her boyfriend. However, the drug lord captures her and forces his men to sew the drugs into her stomach. When the plan goes wrong, Lucy retains superhuman abilities like telepathy and super intelligence. She discovers that the drug is causing her brain to increase to full cerebral capacity. She works together with Professor Norman, Morgan Freeman, to figure out what to do with her growing intelligence and cerebral capacity as she takes on the drug lord and his gang.
Yes the theory that humans only use 10% of their brains is heavily flawed, but I don’t think the movie should be judged primarily on that. The concept of unlocking full cerebral capacity itself is interesting. Unfortunately, Besson primarily uses it as an excuse to give Johansson superpowers and implement cool visuals and action sets. There are thought provoking themes to explore, but when the movie is only ninety minutes long and has quite a few action scenes, the audience will not be impacted by them as much. People complain about Christopher Nolan’s movies being too long, but there is a good reason for that, he gets the audience in on the action but takes the time to explore the themes of the story. Not that Lucy doesn’t explore themes, and I did like the focus on humanity and how it impacts the human mind and how one uses knowledge. Unfortunately, the characters are not particularly memorable either to carry out these messages.
The acting isn’t bad. Scarlett Johansson is well cast; she’s one of those actresses who can fill an emotionless role very well. Morgan Freeman’s fits the role of a wise professor and allows everyone to once again hear his mesmerizing voice. He’s kind of like Christopher Walken—I don’t care about his character, it’s just nice to see them on screen. Choi Min-Sak and Amr Waked do all right jobs as the villainous Mr. Jang and the police officer Del Rio, but like their characters, nothing memorable. The effects seen during Lucy’s abilities and action scenes are pretty good, but nothing to write home about.
Lucy is all right, nothing great but nothing terrible. The concept itself could’ve been utilized better than selling the action scenes, but I’ve seen worse (The Purge…), it does have some interesting themes when cars aren’t blowing up and the actors do an OK job with what they’re given with. If you want to see similar concepts done in a more interesting manner, I’ve heard that Limitless is pretty good, but as of now, Lucy is just an ok action movie with a good lead.
-Brady Lass