LUCY

Lucy
Grade: B

Starring: Scarlett Johansson and Morgan Freeman
Premise: A woman tricked into a deadly smuggling scheme is infected by a powerful chemical drug that enables her to use nearly all of her brain’s capacity.

Rated R for strong violence, blood and gory images, language and disturbing content

Lucy is decent enough for what it is, but what it is, is a misguided mismash of balls-to-the-wall action flick and preachy psychological enlightenment. It’s not a good combination anyway, but Lucy is short enough to be an insanely-entertaining action flick, but not nearly long enough to get us thinking any huge, serious, deep truths about humanity’s existence or life’s purpose. This isn’t exactly Inception, though it rather wants to be. What it is, is a frustrating amount of hooey getting in the way of what is, at times, a truly gripping, can’t-look-away suspense thriller. It’s the last third of the movie that decides to get really preachy, crashing down to an ending that prompted giggles in my theater, an embarrassingly-lame attempt to challenge the audience to walk out feeling changed after watching Scarlett Johansson mutate into a gooey computer.

Which is all a shame, because the movie opens with 10 or 15 of the most gripping, terrifyingly suspenseful minutes I’ve seen in ages—Quentin Tarantino could scarcely have done better. It’s proof that with a little more vision (or a little less), Lucy could have been something really special.

Plot

Right away, hard-partying nobody Lucy (Johansson) knows something isn’t right. Her fling, Richard (Pilou Asbaek) has been offered $1,000 to bring a metal brief case into an office building to a Korean gangster, but he seems reluctant to do it. It’s fairly playful back-and-forth, until he handcuffs the case to Lucy’s wrist and tells her the only way to get it off is deliver it to the gangster inside—a Mr. Jang—who should have the key. Within minutes, Lucy has seen Richard get killed, has been grabbed and dragged upstairs by hulking Korean gangsters, seen Mr. Jang (Min-sik Choi) emerge from a side-room containing a stack of bloody bodies, and seen a man get his head blown off right in front of her. Then Mr. Jang asks her if she wants a job.

Just hours later, Lucy realizes she’s on the front lines of the gangsters’ quest to distribute a powerful new drug to the world. It’s been implanted inside her while she was unconscious. It’s when the drug starts to seep into her system, infecting each cell, that things start getting out of control. Suddenly she feels enlightened, opened, able to detect minute details, hear things no human should hear, capable of astonishing feats she’s certainly never been capable of. She begins to understand even before she gets in contact with a brilliant neurologist (Morgan Freeman)—the drug is allowing her access to more of her brain’s capacity than the 10% humans normally use. More and more. Soon she’s capable of mind-reading, incredible memory, telekinesis, and even superhuman strength. The gangsters have gotten wind of it and are rushing to try and stop her, while the professor desperately seeks a one-on-one with her, trying to get her use her now extraordinary brain power to teach him the secrets of the universe.

What Works?

Like I said, the first fifteen minutes are extraordinary. I’ve seen the previews for Lucy at least a dozen times, so I knew where it was all going—a bag of drugs in her stomach gives her unseemly brainpower—but even so, those opening scenes are so thoroughly disconcerting and creepy (a mix of crime flick and horror movie) that they’re completely riveting. In fact, even more than that—cut out a few inter-cut scenes of Morgan Freeman lecturing an anonymous audience on the human brain, and you’d have probably thirty consecutive minutes of can’t-look-away stuff. It’d be even better if the trailers hadn’t revealed so much and made it obvious what was going on—the beginning is still riveting, but imagine if you hadn’t the faintest idea where it was going.

The second third of the movie isn’t bad, either. As Lucy accesses more and more brain power and is able to do more and more, the film becomes wildly entertaining—watch her flip cars with her mind, surf the web at hyper-speed with a different computer in each hand, change her own hair color at will to hide from the pursuing gangsters, and change Freeman’s professor from a skeptic to a believer in seconds with incredible hacking skills. The part where she throws an attacking gunman through a wall with a casual flick of the hand in his direction isn’t bad, either. Compounded by some fantastic visuals, Lucy builds up one crazy head of steam.

What Doesn’t Work?

Even before it starts to get really preachy, Lucy has a few alarm bells early, with random clips of footage intercut with the movie’s main action that are completely unnecessary (like—we know Lucy is walking into a trap in the office building with the case cuffed to her wrist without seeing random clips of cheetahs stalking grazing gazelles; it’s not rocket science). This doesn’t heighten the suspense but is merely distracting, especially when those early scenes are fine on their own.

And then the movie peters out. After an early scene where Lucy easily evades groups of pursuing policemen and gangsters and then uses her brainpower to navigate an impossible high-speed route against traffic, the movie seems to promise a really epic action throw-down only to have large groups of Korean gangsters and French policemen fight each other in a hallway while Lucy is sheltered in an office connected to a computer. Seriously? Wouldn’t it have been way more fun to get Lucy out there to dodge bullets Matrix-style, and throw all the guys through walls? This could have been a kind of stupid-fun R-rated superhero flick! Instead we watch her pretend she’s in the age of the dinosaurs? Really?

And don’t even get me started on that closing line.

Content

There are a few shots of a barely-clad Johansson, and a brief clip montage of different kinds of animals engaging in the act of reproduction (Humans included), but Lucy derives its hardness from the violence and related details. There are a few scenes of impromptu surgeries (two of which Lucy does with nothing more than her hand) that will give squeamish viewers the willies, and we do see a lot of people get shot. It’s not exactly Scorcese, but it’s rated R for a reason.

Bottom Line:

Lucy has a killer premise, a brilliant first fifteen minutes and some terrific ideas up its sleeve—it’s a shame it almost all goes to waste. The last ten minutes are so hokey and convoluted they don’t deserve to be connected to that opening. Johansson and Freeman are good, obviously, but, by the end of the movie, you end up feeling had. But at least it gives a reasonable explanation as to why Johansson supplied the disembodied voice of a computer in January’s Oscar-nominated drama Her.

Lucy (2014)

Written and Directed by Luc Besson
Rated R
Length: 89 minutes