LUCY

By Marc S. Sanders

Only the headlining actors’ names appear before the title of the film, Lucy, but ten minutes into it I should have known I was watching a Luc Besson actioner.  It’s over the top and proudly exaggerated in its fiction like Leon: The Professional or The Fifth Element.  Because this one has Scarlett Johansson and Morgan Freeman talking about science fiction silliness in a brainy kind of way, Lucy is a lot of fun and likely better than those other two Besson flicks.  Just don’t try to comprehend the tech it preaches.  It’s important to remember that Luc Besson wrote it.  So why try in the first place?

Spliced within the first ten minutes of this hour and a half is nature documentary footage of wildlife in the open and nucleus cells splitting apart and coming together and whatever else cells do.  Most memorable is a cheetah pursuing a losing gazelle.  The story however focuses on young Lucy (Johansson), with her blonde crop topped hair suggestively hiding her left eye with a leopard print jacket hanging on her shoulders.  I got the impression that Lucy is a woman of the night in whatever Asian metropolitan city we are in.  I think Taiwan, but the bad guys speak Korean.  

A cad named Frank coaxes Lucy against her will into delivering a locked, aluminum briefcase to a high-rise apartment.  What’s in the case?  Well, isn’t that the go to starting point of so many movies these days? Whatever it is, it gets Frank killed right in front of Lucy.

But wait!!!! We actually get to see what’s in the case, this time.  Four bags of drugs that look like purple pop rock candies.  

A Korean mobster and his army of black suit/black tie cronies (surprised?) force Lucy and three men to be mules for the drugs and make deliveries.  I wasn’t clear on who the buyers are supposed to be.  It doesn’t matter, because poor, helpless Lucy gets to the airport only to get beaten up, forcing the bag of drugs to rupture and leak within her stomach.  

Besson initially showed us the figure of 10%.  Now, throughout the course of the picture that number will climb because Lucy’s brain capabilities are increasing rapidly as she is mobilized with cerebral powers that normal humans could never accomplish.  Apparently these chemicals are byproducts of the hormones that a pre-born embryo experiences allowing it to grow and develop into a fully functional human.  See, we’ve all gotten what Lucy’s gotten, but we’ve never gotten as much as what Lucy’s gotten.  So look out everyone.  Lucy is not coming to The Matrix.  The Matrix is coming to her.  

Morgan Freeman is the renowned Professor Norman, the world’s leading expert on brain activity.  He’s in Paris delivering a lecture on the theory that humans only use a fraction of their brain power to function.  In fact he claims that the sonar capabilities found in dolphins makes them much more advanced than any of us.  I nominate Flipper for President. We couldn’t get much worse.

With the Korean mob on her tail, Lucy goes after the other three mules located in Rome, Paris and Berlin, and recruits a French detective (Amr Waked) to assist her.  He doesn’t do much though.  

Lucy also makes contact with Professor Norman.  Sure she uses the phone to dial him up, but that’s not the only way she talks to him.  Just wait’ll you see.  And wait til you see how she takes on the mob who carry an armory of machine guns and an endless supply of ammo.  Let’s just say the Avengers and the X-Men don’t stand a chance against Lucy.

Morgan Freeman is not doing anything new here.  The script simply demands a wizened expert to intelligently deliver sci fi gibberish like it came out of Johns Hopkins.  Scarlett Johansson is an action star, no doubt.  At least, Lucy’s quick adaptations to her super powers stand apart from her Black Widow invincibility.  I like how she’s a lovey dovey airhead in the prologue of Besson’s movie and then evolves into a kind of walking bad ass super computer once the drugs kick in gradually doing more of their magic on her.

The ending gets really out there.  I never gave up on the movie, but I didn’t care to think through everything I was looking at.  Judging by Morgan Freeman’s face, neither was he.  He just wore the doctor’s coat.  Besson goes all over the place with wrapping up this short story, designed to be a graphic manga novel. 

The cuts and edits are exhilarating and thankfully Lucy spares us of just endless hand to hand combat stuff, like John Wick.  This movie relies more on superpower material trickery.  Still, it really gets out there.  Like out there to other places.  Like out there to other periods of time.

If Stanley Kubrick were to make an action movie…

Look, at least I bought into all of it because frankly if I’d used any more than 10% of my brain, I’d likely tear the whole movie apart.