Lucy 2 (2025) Movie || Scarlett Johansson, Jason Statham, Morgan Freeman | Review & Facts

[Music] e hello movie lovers welcome to my YouTube channel where we dive deep into the world of Cinema and explore the magic of the Silver Screen today we're stepping into a film that promises to capture our imagination and stir our emotions so grab your popcorn settle in and let's embark on this cinematic journey together ready to find out if Lucy 2 is a must SE or a Miss let's get started Lucy 2 is an upcoming French science fiction action film will be written and directed by Luke Besson and produced by his wife virgin bessen Sila for his company europacorp it will star Scarlet Johansson Morgan Freeman Choy Minick and ammer weight Johansson portrays the titular character a woman who gains psychokinetic abilities when a neut Tropic drug is absorbed into her bloodstream imagine a stranger in a Strange Land Revenge Thriller about a wide-eyed Ango bombshell Scarlet Johansson who gets kidnapped and abused in Taiwan by nasty sweaty shouting Korean gangsters and then escapes to seek Justice then imagine this same movie starring say a lightning fast kickboxer who can knock a dozen opponents teeth out before they can raise a single fist now imagine this same movie injected with a dose of apocalyptic Science Fiction with the woman gaining strange Powers as the story unfolds then Envision midnight movie touches mixed into the film making Flash cuts of predators and prey enhancing otherwise typical scenes of plans being hatched monologues about brain capacity and the true meaning of time coupled with psychedelic visions and wormholes and explanatory objects materializing from thin air that's Luke besson's Lucy a thriller about an American woman who gets kidnapped into Service as a drug mule bearing an experimental synthetic hormone accidentally absorb some of it then sheds her physical intellectual and perceptual limitations I could describe five or six other kinds of movies that in some way also Echo Lucy sections May remind you of the original The Matrix and the last hour of Akira and the final 10 minutes play like a greatest hits of Science Fiction trip movies you've seen a lot of the individual situations and filming techniques in Lucy as well in fact you'd be hard pressed to identify one idea scene or element in the picture that is not a cliche but the total package feels fresh from the minute that Johansson's Title Character suffers a beating in captivity that ruptures the drugs in her stomach and releases them into her bloodstream a Yankee nightmare the film enters a realm of continual Delight though not always surprise there's no point naming any of the other major characters as there really are no other characters only types the Arrogant fat cat drug dealer chy Minick who thinks he can control the short blonde drug mule and learns the hard way that he can't the brilliant deep voiced scientist Morgan Freeman who else whose theoretical studies of the human brain's untapped potential make him an information source and then finally a kind of partner savior to Lucy the handsome nice guy Parisian cop ammer waked who assists Lucy during her climactic mission to acquire more of the experimental hormone to ingest and become whatever it is that she's becoming a 1950s sci-fi monster probably the kind that cannot be killed because everything you shoot at it makes it stronger and hungrier Lucy is little more than a typ herself self a representative of humanity in its unmutated nons superstate Johansson's midcareer transformation from husky voiced in jenu to intensely physical matina Idol is one of the more fascinating arcs in American Cinema it's only her control over her body voice and eyes and maybe our awareness that her performances in this movie her and Under the Skin are all of a piece Lucy even uses the phrase Under the Skin at one point that stops Lucy from being tiresome her work keeps us from realizing that besson's script has botched the chance to tell a deeper Story one that's not just bombastically exciting and superficially clever but quietly tragic Lucy starts with shots of the prehistoric ape woman Lucy and periodically returns to her throughout the story not too subtly comparing the heroin's transformation to that of the species itself from Evolution to Revolution to quote one of the scripts more pent phrases and yet there are only two moments that make us really understand and empathize with Lucy as something other than a cipher who represents the unevolved human one is an early scene of her being terrorized and abused by Taiwanese drug thugs Lucy's abject helplessness here is hard to watch the other occurs deeper in the story when Lucy realizes she's about to embark on a terrifying and probably one-way transformative journey and phones her mom the scene is shot mostly in tight closeup the dialogue has a goofy pran boldness I remember the taste of your milk in my mouth I want to thank you for a thousand kisses that I can feel on my face that scene is so brazenly powerful that in retrospect it made me wish the main character had gone on a journey with more emotional gradations heck I'd have settled for more than the two that Bess and DS to give us oh my God these guys want to kill me and I am God watch me kill these guys when the hormones enter Lucy's bloodstream it's as if a switch has been flipped the heroin starts speaking in monotone and tilting her head at looming men like a quizzical bird regarding a worm that it's about to devour she's woman as Terminator the Terminator is a great movie monster but there's a reason why it's a supporting character in the films that bear its name like many films by bessen the professional The Fifth Element the messenger and other high octane shoot a UPS Lucy starts out riveting but becomes less engaging as it goes along it keeps introducing potentially Rich narrative veins and then failing to tap them it too often falls back on Gunplay and Gore just when you think it might finally delve into the Notions that it keeps serving up with such Fanfare the falseness of the idea of uniqueness the self-defeating nature of a species more concerned with having than being time as the one true unit of measure nevertheless Lucy is a fun confident work it's fast and tight and playful even when it's sadistic and violent which is often it lasts about 90 minutes in change but feels longer in a good way because every second is packed tight it's full of itself yet it still keeps winking at you it wants to be taken seriously but not so seriously that you don't laugh at and with a sight of Lucy strolling into a gunfight wearing no bleed heels or making enemies RI like marionet on invisible strings the movie is alive a fantasy about unlocking 100% of the brains potential that expects viewers to be using just 2 or 3% of their own gray matter Luke besson's Lucy plays more like a big dumb superhero flick than sci-fi the powers Scarlet Johansson gains when given full access to her brain Qui ly outstrip anything one can imagine three PBS of skull bound neurons and synapses being able to do Besson script offers neither the well-drawn character Dynamics nor the clear motivations of a decent comic book origin story and as it is quickly clear that nobody has much chance of stopping Lucy action sequences carry little weight a top shelf cast and the fading memory of besson's action hits will help the picture at the box office but word of mouth is unlikely to keep it alive long after a strong opening weekend Johansson's character begins as a party girl studying in Taipei whose new boyfriend Julian Ryan Tut is involved in bad stuff thanks to him she winds up being an unwilling drug mule for Jang Choy Min siik making the most of a role that forces him to speak through interpreters a big bag of a super drug called cph4 is swn into her guts awaiting transport to New Markets in Europe but the bag Springs a leak when Lucy is r up by her captors entering her system in such quantities Q fun CG shots of cellular level Transformations that it activates huge chunks of cranial real estate she'd never been able to access before like that little known lobe that lets you turn off gravity when it suits you helpfully Besson has been cutting between Lucy's story and an academic lecture in Paris where researcher Samuel Norman Morgan Freeman has been hypothesizing about the very thing that is happening to her making remarkably specific predictions about what might happen if humans were able to use more than the 10% we currently use a myth by the way of The Magnificent super computers in our heads his ideas like some of the film's other early scenes are Illustrated with cutaways to Nature footage suggesting the ways in which all of Earth's creatures are interconnected governed by the same laws think Luke Besson doing the Tree of Life the early stages of Lucy's transformation offer plenty of kicks and even a touching moment or or two after making her badass escape from Jang and his thugs she struts into the nearest Hospital's operating room shoots the patient on the table a glance at the x-rays told her the patient brain tumor was inoperable and has a surgeon pull out the remaining drugs planted inside her forgoing anesthesia she borrows the surgeon's phone and calls her mother while he cuts her open describing what's going on in her head mom I can feel everything she says as the camera almost imper rocks Sensations and emotions stretching back to her birth are available to her triggering what proves to be almost the last humanlike response she has in the film from here on out Johansson's performance grows colder and more analytical Besson doesn't let her become as persuasively alien as she is in Under the Skin but he doesn't want a human either Lucy sets out to round up other batches of the drug and get to Paris where she can let Dr Norman see his theories in action why do this one wonders when in a matter of minutes she has already read his thousands of pages of research and surpassed his understanding plenty of films and novels have envisioned what would happen if we gained conscious control over our entire brain While most would probably make a real neuroscientist cackle uncontrollably it's hard to recall one whose ideas were more laughable than this one we may roll with the film as its heroine learns Taiwanese over the course of a cab ride or sees the electromagnetic spectrum of cell phone calls swiping through them as if she were reading their conversations on a touchscreen we may even buy it when she's able to change her body at will sh growing a webbed hand would take some time and fuel but at least a body cells are controlled by its brain but the film gives not the slightest justification for Lucy's increasingly god-like abilities which soon include time travel and levitation every now and then a nugget of real philosophy is dro into the screenplay but it's surrounded by so much blather that even a generous viewer has trouble using it to justify what Lucy experiences even more damning in an action film Bess and dos out powers in a way that nullifies much of the drama to come once we've seen this woman put an entire room of people to sleep with a wave of a hand why would we be worried for her when a smaller gang is pointing guns at her and why wouldn't she just pull the same trick here instead of wasting her time with shower and less believable Feats the movie occasionally attempts to make Lucy's Quest accessible to Mortal viewers though she doesn't need the assistance of a French cop named Del Rio Amar wake for instance she keeps him with her as a reminder of her fading Humanity but the reality-based action a long wrong way trip through Paris traffic a showdown with gangsters who want their drugs back feels irrelevant to what the film really wants to show us unfortunately though it can concludes with a line suggesting Lucy has finally found all the answers Lucy never tells us what the question is although it represents a significant role of the dice as the most expensive project ever undertaken by the filmmakers eurac Corp shingle Lucy should capitalize on its strong International elements and Johansson's Bank ability to become besson's biggest worldwide hit as a director since the Fifth Element no small feat for an s/x heavy original property in this over franchised day and age and unlike that bloated 1997 dystopian Juggernaut the film manages to clock in at a surprisingly sleek and Multiplex friendly 88 minutes and its abrupt but elegant conclusion has the Curious benefit of making this extravagantly silly entertainment seems somehow smarter and more enigmatic in retrospect than it does while it's unfolding certainly the opening scenes don't Inspire much confidence that Besson is operating at anywhere near his full intellectual capacity or that he expects any such smarts from his audience after a brief prehistoric flashback to the dawn of man the film quickly deposits Us in present day Taipei where Lucy Johansson a hard partying American blonde finds herself lured into the web of a ruthless Korean Crime Boss named Mr J the splendidly villainous Choy men sick this entire sequence is laughably intercut with nature doc footage of cheetahs pouncing on their prey just in case we fail to grasp our heroin's trapped condition terrified out of her mind Lucy is forced to become a drug mule with a bag containing a highly potent synthetic substance called cph4 sewn into her stomach when the bag bursts Bess and happily supplies a visceral closeup of her insides Lucy not only miraculously survives the overdose but also begins to experience some unintended and not entirely unwelcome side effects the reason soon becomes clear rather than being restricted to the use of a mere 10% of her brain she is suddenly able to access 20% and then 30% and so on an unprecedented feat whose implications are unpacked at some length by the paris-based researcher Professor Norman Morgan Freeman the well-documented fact that humans actually do use most of their brains manages to debunk the movie's premise without in any way detracting from its loopy Pleasures Lucy's condition manifests itself gradually at first then in ever grander and more astonishing ways no longer cowering in fear she's now an expert assassin who quickly frees herself and turns the tables on her captors although she's largely immune to pain her powers of sensory perception reach superhuman levels of Acuity a phenomenon visualized by Besson and his visual effects team as an endless network of data streams invisible to the naked eye she absorbs vast quantities of data especially foreign languages in record time and develops the ability to man ulate matter telekinetically which as Lucy learns comes in pretty handy whether you're trying to disarm an opponent or weave your way in and out of traffic but even as her cognitive command increases the film keeps upping her brain percentage every 10 minutes or so so does her awareness that she will not be able to survive much longer in this state as her trillions of cells each one now uniquely empowered begin to behave in the manner of a rapidly metastasizing cancer one particularly dazzling CG sequence set aboard an airplane reveals her individual particles struggling to break free of their corporeal prison and so not unlike The Poisoned hero of the 195 noard DOA Lucy finds herself in a Race Against Time and her own body traveling from Taiwan to France visually speaking that means from taipe 101 to the Eiffel Tower she's aided by the good professor and a bemused cop Egyptian actor ammer w in her quest to bring her enemies to Justice and also to use her Superior knowledge for the good of Humanity on an almost admirably perverse level Lucy isn't really much of a thriller it's virtually an anti- Thriller devoid of suspense or any real sense of danger due to the fact that its heroin is more or less Invincible at times it's hard to shake the sense that a smarter more unbridled picture might have found a way to slip the bonds of genre altogether but if the movie Fizzles somewhat his action it's because Besson seems more interested in engaging playfully yet seriously with the various biological philosophical and metaphysical riddles that his story raises pointedly Lucy gets a couple of eloquent monologues in which to ponder such weighty matters as the impermanence of all life the preciousness of every moment the human tendency to prioritize feeling overthinking the depressing myopia of human experience in general and the fact that life gains meaning only with the passage of time one reason Lo emerges an enjoyably nutty diversion rather than a self-important slog is that it pays deaft knowing homage to any number of Hollywood sci-fi Head trip Classics embedding its ideas in a dense Labyrinth of cinematic references that somehow end up feeling Sly rather than shopworn in trying to locate Mankind's precarious position within the greater Cosmic order while also anticipating the literally minded blowing next phase of human evolution besson's film carries unmistakable traces of both 20 0 1 and the Tree of Life some of it even takes place in outer space Lucy's gradual rise to omniscience and omnipotence recalls Neo's own such journey in The Matrix while her many black suited Korean opponents suggest another Army of Agents Smiths Asian Smiths and in those moments when Lucy uploads herself Big Brother style to every computer and TV screen in the vicinity the movie can't help but suggest a livelier less ponderous remake of this Year's similar themed Transcendence not least among these Illusions to other movies are the obvious Echoes of besson's own like laem Nikita Leon the Professional and The Fifth Element before it Lucy is a slickly engineered showcase for a kick-ass heroine whom we instinctively unhesitatingly root for it also feels like a calculated bid for popularity with a younger American audience that may be unfamiliar with this particular GAC genre Maestro the taken movies he produced not withstanding certainly after the Bland history lesson of the lady and the joyless familyfriendly shenanigans of the Arthur Trilogy this is easily the director's most alert energized and recognizable piece of Direction in years a movie that with its muscular widescreen imagery vibrant streaks of color and pulsing musical beats as well as its occasional tonal missteps and moments of unintentional hilarity feels unmistakably like the work of its director in the end though it's Joe Hansson our resident Avatar of the otherworldly who goes the furthest in bringing all these disperate elements together in her the actress gave voice to a higher more sophisticated form of Consciousness and in Under the Skin she managed the tricky feat of regarding Humanity through alien eyes in some ways Lucy represents the point at which both roles converge and Johansson has the unusually difficult job here of subtly conveying her character's observations reactions and eventual epiphanies in a mostly dead pan flattened out register that becomes only more subdued as the film progresses somehow she succeeds beyond all reason indeed during the movie's ludicrous bordering on Sublime final minutes marked by whooshing camera movements and a highly malleable sense of time it's hard not to wonder if Lucy fully free at last and with infinite possibilities at her fingertips might be intended as a hopeful thinly veiled standin for Besson himself not for nothing one suspects is the character's first name but one letter removed from his own Scarlett Johansson The Avengers plays a woman forced to be a mule for some drug dealers with very little regard for human life but when the bag of drugs in her stomach breaks and the drug seeps into her bloodstream Lucy gains superhuman abilities like she's a cross between a superhero a Jedi Knight and Neo from The Matrix there's a lot to love about Lucy not only does the movie move along at a nice clip but it has some rather visually engaging scenes though many of them were in the trailer and Scarlet Johansson is perfect for this role as she's as Adept at playing scared and vulnerable as she is playing someone with real or unreal as the case may be power thankfully she has some equally strong actors to play against most notably Minick Choy old boy who viciously chews up every scene he's in as the leader of the drug dealers lies entirely with Besson both as writer and director for starters not a lot happens which is both good and bad had anyone else made this movie Lucy would have used her powers to go on a bloody Revenge trip complete with over-the-top destruction slowmo Gunplay and spectacular explosions but bessin and thus Lucy takes a different approach which is interesting and unexpected except that there's not a lot to it while you may not be able to guess where this is going from the general premise once you've seen it it doesn't take more than a sentence or two to explain everything that happens in fact bessen actually pads out the movie a bit by illustrating certain points with stock nature footage though some of it does make more sense when you get to the end which causes the second problem the movie's pointlessly pretentious visual style the film's use of nature footage along with some needless slow-mo gives this movie an artsy feel but it's one it really doesn't need at least not to this degree again I appreciate Bess in trying to do something different had Lucy been a Michael Bay movie it would have been two hours of slow mo cleavage and Fireballs but it really doesn't work for this story it's almost like Besson was trying to make a 2001 kind of movie when he should have been trying to make the Matrix and as a result he ended up with an artsy version of Commando and since Johansson and Choy are both magnetic in it it's hard to say that Lucy isn't worth seeing maybe not full price at a theater but certainly at a matina or at home if you have a nice home theater set up just make sure you suspend your disbelief before sitting down because Lucy stretches credibility quite often at the very least try not to laugh too loud when the cops show up and don't notice the drug kingpin and his henchmen fiddling with large guns nearby one last thing I'm sure some critics will dis Lucy by saying it's like a video game but for once they're kind of right well about the game part not the dismissive part Lucy's Powers level up and she gains new abilities as she reaches certain Milestones but these elements don't weaken Lucy as a cinematic experience if anything if Lucy had gotten all of her powers all at once this movie would be even shorter and have even less going on than it already does it takes a movie like Lucy to fully reveal the inadequacy of rating a movie on a fivepoint scale or any other standardized measure for that matter in any objective evaluation it is lacking any number of areas and I'll get to some of those in a minute this is objectively not a good movie and yet I enjoyed nearly every moment of it it's a be movie running around in $40 million of Hollywood finery which is probably what we should have expected from a movie written and directed by Luke Besson Luke Lucy Stars Scarlet Johansson as Lucy a vapid aimless 20-some living in what I initially took to be Japan but I think was actually supposed to be Singapore it really doesn't matter and neither does what she's doing there pretty soon she's conned into making a delivery to a crime kingpen who has all the requisite men in suits and fancy amenities for her delivery boy boyfriend things go downhill from there as the drop doesn't go as planned and she's forced into being a mule for the crime syndicate the helpless girl becomes less so however when the baggie of drugs implanted in her stomach bursts and she begins to be able to access higher percentages of her cerebral capacity off the old we only use 10% of our brains idea it's at about this point that the movie starts intercutting Lucy's tribulations with Morgan Freeman as Professor who researches such things he's giving a lecture on brain capacity which means he's basically doctor Exposition so the audience can keep up with the changes Lucy is undergoing though for shorthand you can just think Neo at the end of The Matrix but even more of an expressionless Cipher and you're most of the way there it's funny to juxtapose Scarlet Johansson's Sublime performances in recent movies like her and Under the Skin whatever I thought of that movie overall Johansson was phenomenal with a movie like this both of those films were so concerned with character with details with a finer points of performance and theme and Lucy is um not oh Johansson is still pretty good but she's Hamming it up and she probably knows it so when drugs start seeping into Lucy and she's uncontrollably shaking her way across the floor walls and ceiling of the cell she's being kept in you're pretty sure besson's attention was not on the precise nature of the way Johansson was shaking watching her have a seizure across every surface of the room is kind of weird and funny and sort of effective allinone but the movie is way more more concerned with the more direct idea the drugs are reacting inside her body and taking it over that's the beauty of the film okay maybe beauty is a strong word but that's why I suppose I reacted more positively to this movie when I criticize many others for being derivative this is undoubtedly a familiar film one that hits expected action movie beats even when they don't make much plot sense but it also introduces just enough visual flare that I said a okay and rolled with it when police cars go flipping through the air the movie might lag a bit with a sense of been there done that but when even an on-the-nose attempt is made to marry the creation sequences from the Tree of Life and footage from a nature special to an action film about Far Eastern Mafia chasing a powerful but limited heroine you have to grin a little in appreciation does any of that mean Lucy is perfect heck no the good mood I had from some enjoyable music music during the intro credits was just about ruined by an overactive editing finger in the first scene with Lucy when she argues with her boyfriend about making the delivery for him there are entire sequences well really most of the plot that make little sense other than as a mechanism for moving things forward particularly the early non-death of a main character when the newly empowered Lucy has previously shown no qualms about killing there's plenty to roll your eyes at and yet Abandon All logic ye who here because we are about to start talking Lucy you might want to leave reason and Science by the door while you're at it you won't have much call to use either of those for the next 90 minutes or so French action aour Luke Besson has made his version of 2001 or at least his tree of life and it is a wild wild time people are going to walk into what they think is a Scarlet Johanson fronted action movie and have their minds broken this is very much not the movie you were led to expect but got him if it isn't a total freaking blast there will be those who L this as the most fun movie of The Summer While others will condemn it as complete and utter nonsense and somehow they'll both be right right away you learn that Lucy is like a roller coaster when that big metal restraint clanks down over your shoulders to hold you in place you're like it I'm here and all you can do is throw your hands in the air and scream we as the propulsive momentum whips your head back and forth and pummels your common sense this is like the meth addicted sibling of transcendence it's strange and funny sometimes deliberately other times unintentionally so but it's always exciting and unpredictable you can never be sure what crazy is about to come around the corner but after the main character starts disintegrating in an airplane bathroom everything is up for grabs much has been made of this film being based on the we only use 10% of our brains myth which as you probably know is total but if you can look past a radioactive spider bite causing superpowers or gamma radiation turning an angry man big and green you can get past this besides you have way way bigger hurdles to get over Lucy Johansson is a student in Taipei through a series of events that are like a bad urban legend cautionary tale she winds up with an unwanted parcel of a new drug stitched into her belly when it invariably ruptures pumping magic purple dust in to her bloodstream she gains access to as yet unexplored regions of her brain unlocking all kinds of cool powers like being able to control every cell in her body every once in a while the film flashes a little card that counts down how much of her brain she's using like at 60% she turns a Chinese gangster into an inadvertent mime while all of this is going on B and cuts in stock nature footage intended to illustrate the Predator pre Dynamic natural selection at work and all kinds of animals humping all over the place often with a JY tune superimposed over the images it's bizarre depending on your perspective the editing is either brilliant or insane ju opposing footage of natural disasters and Chaos with the calming dulet tones of Morgan Freeman's Professor Norman an expert in this non-science there's no real goal or narrative thrust or Point Lucy is little more than a buildup to 100% where action scene like in crazy ass car chase through the streets of Paris happened for no solid reason in this case her only explanation is we're late ostensibly Lucy is after the rest of the drugs while over the toop Crime Boss Mr Jang old boy choy men sick chases her every step of the way that's about it you're never entirely sure what she is trying to accomplish but watching her go about her business is damn entertaining Lucy tries to be scientific it isn't it tries to be philosophical and fails in miserable fashion and it wants to be smart so damn bad but it just isn't in any way what the movie is however is totally audacious and nuts the work of either a genius or a lunatic or both full of action movie tropes that Besson helped create like a character clutching two guns walking in slow motion as classical music plays in my book Besson is every bit as responsible for overexposing this kind of flare as John Woo or my personal favorite a camera background and character all spinning at spinning at the same time but at different speeds outside of the First Act where there is some sharp dialogue and snappy negotiations Johansson doesn't do much acting wise aside from Channel Keanu Reeves flat delivery from The Matrix but after that watching her kick ass and fling people around like she's a Jedi night using the force is way more fun than it reasonably should be Freeman is there to say sound soothing like he knows what he's talking about and to add an a of class to the proceedings which he doesn't everyone else is just a playing for Lucy's whims a canvas to show off her newly acquired skills and abilities like making stock bad guys levitate and flail around like turtles stuck on their backs every summer there is one movie that flies under my radar one that I know is coming but I'm not super invested in but winds up surprising the hell out of me and being totally awesome this year that movie is Lucy delirious and gleeful Besson has created something bizarre and outlandish that is totally ludicrous in the best possible way by the time Lucy is blasting back through history to the very origins of the human race everything is so chaotic and insane that you can't help but we're a huge eating grin this is a hard movie to recommend because while I loved it many people will absolutely despise every frame if you're looking for for something batshit crazy and more than a little mind-boggling Lucy may be just what you're looking for in Taipei Taiwan Lucy Scarlet Johansson is an everyday American girl who is studying abroad when her new boyfriend Richard pis beak causes her to become caught up in a ruthless Asian drug ring the criminal gang led by Mr jenman siik Choy used Lucy and three other captives as vessels to transport a new unstable drug to various parts of the world when the bag of drugs implanted inside Lucy starts leaking her cells start reproducing at an alarming rate and the more the drugs spread throughout her system the more she starts to unlock the potential of her mind according to scientist Professor Norman Morgan Freeman whose lectures in Paris are intercut with Lucy's experiences in Taiwan we only use 10% of our mental capacity and as the drug charges Lucy's system she is able to tap into more and more of her brain power as Lucy comes to terms with her new abilities and travels to Paris to meet with the professor she simultaneously seeks revenge on Mr Jang and his minions and employs the assistance of Parisian law enforcement agent Pierre Del Rio ammer wake to do so as soon as the film opened with colorful Graphics of cells reproducing alongside Eric Sarah's funky score I knew I was going to love this film and as the film progressed I was not disappointed the whole concept may be a bit over elaborate with the dual storyline of Lucy wreaking havoc on the Asian drug lords whilst also liasing with the professor and discovering her heightened abilities and Besson May delve too far into the science fiction genre for my liking towards the end of the film but these are my only criticisms yes the narrative does become more than a little far-fetched in the Final Act and yes Lucy's superhuman skills are quite difficult to believe but the film is so thrilling that it's easy to overlook these flaws I must admit that I am extremely partial to Scarlet Johansson as I said in my review of Captain America the Winter Soldier I absolutely idolize her apparently Angelina Jolie was originally considered for the role and although she is another favorite of mine I am very glad that Scarlet was cast instead we have seen enough of Angelina in these types of roles in films such as salt and Lara Croft Tomb Raider so it's refreshing to see someone new step up to the plate scar has previously proved herself in physical roles such as in her portrayal of the black window in multiple Marvel films however this is the first time I have seen her bring to life such a strong female heroin that has the power and depth to carry an entire film as a lead character from the very opening scene Scarlet Nails it she fully embodies the character and demands your attention when she transitions into a robotic version of Lucy when she has lost her Humanity as a result of the effects of the drug drugs Scarlet is equally strong Morgan Freeman and the minor cast members all deliver satisfactory performances whilst none of them are outstanding no one is noticeably weak either in a way I think this is effective as it allows the spotlight to shine more upon Scarlet as their performances support her rather than overshadow her although his role in the film is fairly brief pyou beak is definitely the standout among these additional cast members unlike a lot of directors in this day and age Luke Besson is not one to roll out one film after the other as if he is working in a factory whilst he has numerous writing and producing credits to his name he only takes on the occasional project as a director and these films are always memorable from The Fifth Element to Leon the Professional this French filmmaker often directs films centered around powerful female characters such as his early '90s film life M Nikita and one of his more recent releases the lady I felt as though Lucy was very reminiscent of lifeam Nikita and I think Besson must be rather connected to the subject matter of this '90s film as he has also written the American television series based around the same concept which is just known as Nikita Lucy has the same dark and Sinister tone as lefm Nikita but it's quite a bit more glamorous with the big Hollywood special effects and epic action sequences taking place in major cities whereas laem Nikita was done on a much smaller scale in both films Besson starts off the narrative in the middle of a scene and leaves the viewer to put the puzzle together and draw their own conclusions which I really enjoy the First Act of Lucy is so suspenseful because first of all you are trying to figure out who this main character is and what is going on and then as one shocking event after the other unfolds you are left feeling just as frightened and tense as Lucy is both you and her try to learn the endgame of the drug lord I am a huge fan of besson's choice to intercut a lot of the First Act with shots of Nature and animal behavior that reflect what is happening in the narrative this technique easily could have come across as jarring but somehow it really worked his attention to detail is also astounding for example in the beginning Scarlet wears chipped silver nail polish but once she starts reaching into higher percentages of her brain's capacity and is able to control the growth and color of her hair her nail polish becomes perfect and smooth whether this decision was the choice of the designer or a direct product of besson's vision is yet to be seen but either way it is an indication of how much thought goes into besson's films I briefly mentioned Eric Sarah's score up above and I have to say it's one of the greatest scores I've heard this year second probably only to the score in Only Lovers Left Alive it's eclectic and modern and although at times it draws attention to itself self which normally I don't like it suits the story and the visual style so well that it doesn't matter that it's so noticeable in fact I preferred it this way Eric Sarah has worked on most of besson's other films as has cinematographer tiar arbag Gast and the camera work is absolutely beautiful in this film The cinematography does get a little lost in between so many other excellent elements but there are some gorgeous shots in there the special effects are also very impressive with an inception-like moment where gangsters are swimming in midair as if gravity has ceased to exist on the surface Lucy's premise sounds plausible enough even though it's based on a debunked urban legend the idea goes something like this human beings typically utilize only about 10% of their cerebral capacity not true so what would happen if a person could open up all the unused neural Pathways and access 100% the movie goes on some Flights of Fancy in F this to its improbable conclusion but although one might deem besson's resolution to be Preposterous it's never uninteresting although the movie eventually transforms into something odd it begins in a traditional Bess inish fashion which is to say with Fast Cuts violence and warped humor Lucy Scarlet Johansson is in the wrong place at the wrong time she is tricked by her soon to be ex-boyfriend into delivering a locked briefcase to a gangster Mr Jang Min sick choice who is not sympathetic to Lucy's predicament after forcing her to open the briefcase which contains a new kind of experimental drug Mr Jang takes Lucy prisoner inserts a bag of the drug into her stomach and forces her to work as his mule however rough treatment at the hands of one of Mr jang's thugs causes the bag to break and the drug leaks into Lucy system there are two consequences to this her brain capacity begins to increase and she becomes terminally ill she seeks out brain expert Professor Norman Morgan Freeman who spends much of the movie in Exposition mode in an attempt to understand what's happening to her meanwhile Mr Jang and his men track Lucy with the goal of killing her before she becomes too powerful to take out the plot element involving the bad guys in Lucy feels almost irrelevant Mr Jang isn't threatening and Besson doesn't take the time to make him into anything more Sinister than a cartoon character once Lucy has begun to evolve there's no sense that she's in danger Lucy is more about her journey what she's becoming and what its implications are for Humanity Besson doesn't provide all the answers the ending is saturated with ambiguity Scarlet johanson's presence combined with the way in which the movie concludes brings a forceful echo of her some viewers left that movie scratching their heads that will be even truer of Lucy Universal has done this movie A service by positioning it as a mainstream action thriller and hinting that Lucy is an X-Men style mutant who will use her powers to do all sorts of crowd pleasing things instead this is closer to an art housee film than a mainstream offering and the Hue and cry from those Expecting The Summer's next big Blockbuster will be loud indeed sure there's plenty of action in Lucy but it's not of the Rah R sort this is a more contemplative sort of Motion Picture the climax in particular although as visually impressive as it is bizarre Tree of Life anyone is more likely to frustrate than satisfy this Defiance of expectations done with bold-faced irreverence allows Lucy to work on its own terms there are plenty of plot related issues not the least of which is that the film's science is wrongheaded in many ways but it's hard not to be impressed by a movie that pushes forward relentlessly without being predictable I value films even flawed ones that have the capacity to surprise me audiences in general will probably react negatively to Lucy but that's more the fault of the promoters and marketers than it is of the men and women who crafted it this is a fine quirky sci-fi offering that will appeal to those who aren't in the theater for the reasons most people will be hello movie lovers welcome to my YouTube channel where we dive deep into the world of Cinema and explore the magic of the Silver Screen today we're stepping into a film that promises to capture our imagination and stir our emotions so grab your popcorn settle in and let's embark on this cinematic journey together ready to find out if Lucy 2 is a mustsee or a Miss let's get started Lucy 2 is an upcoming French science fiction action film will be written and directed by Luke Besson and produced by his wife virgin Bess andilla for his company europacorp it will star Scarlet Johansson Morgan Freeman Choy Minick and ammer weight Johansson portrays the titular character a woman who gains psychokinetic abilities when a neut Tropic drug is absorbed into her bloodstream Imagine A Stranger in a Strange Land Revenge Thriller about a wide eyed Anglo bombshell Scarlet Johansson who gets kidnapped and abused in Taiwan by nasty sweaty shouting Korean gangsters and then escapes to seek Justice then imagine this same movie starring say a lightning fast kickboxer who can knock a dozen opponents teeth out before they can raise a single fist now imagine this same movie injected with a dose of apocalyptic Science Fiction with the woman gaining strange Powers as the story unfolds then Envision midnight movie touches mixed into the film making Flash cuts of predators and prey enhancing otherwise typical scenes of plans being hatched monologues about brain capacity and the true meaning of time coupled with psychedelic visions and wormholes and and explanatory objects materializing from thin air that's Luke besson's Lucy a thriller about an American woman who gets kidnapped into Service as a drug mule bearing an experimental synthetic hormone accidentally absorbs some of it then sheds her physical intellectual and perceptual limitations I could describe five or six other kinds of movies that in some way also Echo Lucy sections May remind you of the original The Matrix and the last hour of Akira and the final 10 minutes play like a greatest hits of Science Fiction trip movies you've seen a lot of the individual situations and film making techniques in Lucy as well in fact you'd be hardpressed to identify one idea scene or element in the picture that is not a cliche but the total package feels fresh from the minute that Johansson's Title Character suffers a beating in captivity that ruptures the drugs in her stomach and releases them into her bloodstream a Yankee nightmare the film enters a realm of continual Delight though not always surprise there's no point naming any of the other major characters as there really are no other characters only types the Arrogant fat cat drug dealer Choy Minik who thinks he can control the short blonde drug mule and learns the hard way that he can't the brilliant deep-voiced scientist Morgan Freeman who else whose theoretical studies of the human brain's untapped potential make him an information source and then finally a kind of partner savior to Lucy the handsome nice guy Parisian cop ammer wed who assists Lucy during her climactic mission to acquire more of the experimental hormone to ingest and become whatever it is that she's becoming a 1950s sci-fi monster probably the kind that cannot be killed because everything you shoot at it makes it stronger and hungrier Lucy is little more than a type herself a representative of humanity in its unmutated nons superstate Johansson's mid-career transformation from husky voiced in jenu to intensely physical matina Idol is one of the more fascinating arcs in American Cinema it's only her control over her body voice and eyes and maybe our awareness that her performances in this movie her and Under the Skin are all of a piece Lucy even uses the phrase Under the Skin at one point that stops Lucy from being tiresome her work keeps us from realizing that besson's script has botched the chance to tell a deeper story one that's not just bombastically exciting and superficially clever but quietly tragic Lucy starts with shots of the prehistoric ape woman Lucy and periodically returns to her throughout the story not too subtly comparing the heroin's transformation to that of the species itself from Evolution to Revolution to quote one of the script's more pungent phrases and yet there are only two moments that make us really understand and empathize with Lucy as something other than a cipher who represents the unevolved human one is an early scene of her being terrorized and abused by Taiwanese drug thugs Lucy's object helplessness here is hard to watch the other occurs deeper in the story when Lucy realizes she's about to embark on a terrifying and probably one-way transformative journey and phones her mom the scene is shot mostly in tight closeup the dialogue has a goofy pran boldness I remember the taste of your milk in my mouth I want to thank you for a thousand kisses that I can feel on my face that scene is so brazenly powerful that in retrospect it made me wish the main character had gone on a journey with more emotional gradations heck I'd have settled for more than the two that Bess and DS to give us oh my God these guys want to kill me and I am God watch me kill these guys when the hormones enter Lucy's bloodstream it's as if a switch has been flipped the heroine starts speaking in monot and tilting her head at looming men like a quizzical bird regarding a worm that it's about to devour she's woman as Terminator the Terminator is a great movie monster but there's a reason why it's a supporting character in the films that bear its name like many films by Besson the professional The Fifth Element the messenger and other high octane shoot him UPS Lucy starts out riveting but becomes less engaging as it goes along it keeps introducing potentially Rich narrative veins and then failing to tap them it too often falls back on Gunplay and Gore just when you think it might finally delve into the Notions that it keeps serving up with such Fanfare the falseness of the idea of uniqueness the self-defeating nature of a species more concerned with having than being time as the one true unit of measure nevertheless Lucy is a fun confident work it's fast and tight and playful even when it's sadistic and violent which is often it lasts about 90 minutes and change but feels longer in a good way because every second is packed tight it's full of itself yet it still keeps winking at you it wants to be taken seriously but not so seriously that you don't laugh at and with the sight of Lucy strolling into a gunfight wearing no bleed heels or making enemies RI like marionet on invisible strings the movie is alive a fantasy about unlocking 100% of the brain's potential that expects viewers to be using just 2 or 3% of their own gray matter Luke Besson Lucy plays more like a big dumb superhero flick than sci-fi the powers Scarlet Johansson gains when given full access to her brain quickly outstrip anything one can imagine three pounds of skull bound neurons and synapses being able to do Besson script offers neither the well-drawn character Dynamics nor the clear motivations of a decent comic book origin story and as it is quickly clear that no Badd has much chance of stopping Lucy action sequences carry little weight a top shelf cast and the fading memory of besson's action hits will help the picture at the box office but word of mouth is unlikely to keep it alive long after a strong opening weekend Johansson's character begins as a party girl studying in Taipei whose new boyfriend Julian Ryan Tut is involved in bad stuff thanks to him she winds up being an unwilling drug mule for Jang Choy men sick making the most of a role that forces him to speak through interpreters a big bag of a super drug called cph4 is sewn into her guts awaiting transport to New Markets in Europe but the bag Springs a leak when Lucy is roughed up by her captors entering her system in such quantities Q fun CG shots of cellular level Transformations that it activates huge chunks of cranial real estate she'd never been able to access before like that little known lobe that lets you turn off gravity when it suits you helpfully Besson has been cutting between Lucy's story and an academic lecture in Paris where researcher Samuel Norman Morgan Freeman has been hypothesizing about the very thing that is happening to her making remarkably specific predictions about what might happen if humans were able to use more than the 10% we currently use a myth by the way of the magnificent supercomputers in our heads his ideas like some of the film's other early scenes are Illustrated with cutaways to Nature footage suggest in the ways in which all of Earth's creatures are interconnected governed by the same laws think Luke Besson doing the Tree of Life the early stages of Lucy's transformation offer plenty of kicks and even a touching moment or two after making her badass escape from Jang and his thugs she struts into the nearest Hospital's operating room shoots the patient on the table a glance at the x-rays told her the patient's brain tumor was inoperable and has a surgeon pull out the remaining drugs planted inside her foregoing anesthesia she borrows the surgeon's phone and calls her mother while he cuts her open describing what's going on in her head mom I can feel everything she says as the camera almost imperceptibly rocks Sensations and emotions stretching back to her birth are available to her triggering what proves to be almost the last humanlike response she has in the film from here on out Johansson's performance grows colder and more analytical Besson doesn't let her become as persuasively alien as she is in Under the Skin but he doesn't want a human either Lucy sets out to round up other batches of the drug and get to Paris where she can let Dr Norman see his theories in action why do this one wonders when in a matter of minutes she has already read his thousands of pages of research and surpassed his understanding plenty of films and novels have envisioned what would happen if we gained conscious control over our entire brain While most would probably make a real neuroscientist cackle uncontrollably it's hard to recall one whose ideas were more laughable than this one we may roll with the film as its heroine learns Taiwanese over the course of a cab ride or sees the electromagnetic spectrum of cell phone calls swiping through them as if she were reading their conversations on a touchcreen we may even buy it when she's able to change her body at will sure growing a webbed hand would take some time and fuel but at least a body cells are controlled by its brain but the film gives not the slightest justification for Lucy's increasingly Godlike abilities which soon include time travel and levitation every now and then a nugget of real philosophy is dropped into the screenplay but it's surrounded by so much blather that even a generous viewer has trouble using it to justify what Lucy experiences even more damning in an action film Bess and dos out powers in a way that nullifies much of the drama to come once we've seen this woman put an entire room of people to sleep with a wave of a hand why would we be worried for her when a smaller gang is pointing guns at her and why wouldn't she just pull the same trick here instead of wasting her time with shower and less believable Feats the movie occasionally attempts to make Lucy's Quest accessible to Mortal viewers though she doesn't need the assistance of a French cop named Del Rio ammer wake for instance she keeps him with her as a reminder of her fading Humanity but the reality-based action a long wrongway trip through Paris traffic a showdown with gangsters who want their drugs back feels irrelevant to what the film really wants to show us unfortunately though it concludes with a line suggesting Lucy has finally found all the answers Lucy never tells us what the question is although it represents a significant role of the dice as the most expensive project ever undertaken by the filmmakers yorp shingle Lucy should capital iies on its strong International elements and Johansson's Bank ability to become besson's biggest worldwide hit as a director since the Fifth Element no small feat for an s/x heavy original property in this over franchised day and age and unlike that bloated 1997 dystopian Juggernaut the film manages to clock in at a surprisingly sleek and Multiplex friendly 88 minutes and its abrupt but elegant conclusion has the Curious benefit of making this extravagantly silly entertainment seems somehow smarter and more enigmatic in retrospect than it does while it's unfolding certainly the opening scenes don't Inspire much confidence that Besson is operating at anywhere near his full intellectual capacity or that he expects any such smarts from his audience after a brief prehistoric flashback to the dawn of man the film quickly deposits Us in present day Taipei where Lucy Johansson a hard- partying American blonde finds herself lured into the web of a ruthless career Crime Boss named Mr J the splendidly villainous Choy men sick this entire sequence is laughably intercut with nature dock footage of cheetahs pouncing on their prey just in case we fail to grasp our heroin's trapped condition terrified out of her mind Lucy is forced to become a drug mule with a bag containing a highly potent synthetic substance called cph4 sewn into her stomach when the bag bursts Bess and happily supplies a visceral closeup of her insides Luc not only miraculously survives the overdose but also begins to experience some unintended and not entirely unwelcome side effects the reason soon becomes clear rather than being restricted to the use of a mere 10% of her brain she is suddenly able to access 20% and then 30% and so on an unprecedented feat whose implications are unpacked at some length by the paris-based researcher Professor Norman Morgan Freeman the well-documented fact that humans actually do use most of their brains manages to debunk the movie's premise without in any way detracting from its loopy Pleasures Lucy's condition manifests itself gradually at first then in ever grander and more astonishing ways no longer cing in fear she's now an expert assassin who quickly frees herself and turns the tables on her captors although she's largely immune to pain her powers of sensory perception reach superhuman levels of Acuity a phenomenal visualized by Besson and his visual effects team as an endless network of data streams invisible to the naked eye she absorbs vast quantities of data especially foreign languages in record time and develops the ability to manipulate matter telekinetically which as Lucy learns comes in pretty handy whether you're trying to disarm an opponent or weave your way in and out of traffic but even as her cognitive command increases the film keeps upping her brain percentage every 10 minutes or so so does her awareness that she will not be able to survive much longer in this state as her trillions of cells each one now uniquely empowered begin to behave in the manner of a rapidly metastasizing cancer one particularly dazzling CG sequence set aboard an airplane reveals her individual particles struggling to break free of their corporeal prison and so not unlike The Poisoned hero of the 195 noard DOA Lucy finds herself in a Race Against Time and her own body traveling from Taiwan to France visually speaking that means from taipe 101 to the Eiffel Tower she's aided by the good professor and a bemused cop Egyptian actor ammer w in her quest to bring her enemies to Justice and also to use her Superior knowledge for the good of Humanity on an almost admirably perverse level Lucy isn't really much of a thriller it's virtually an anti-th Thriller devoid of suspense or any real sense of danger due to the fact that its heroin is more more or less Invincible at times it's hard to shake the sense that a smarter more unbridled picture might have found a way to slip the bonds of genre altogether but if the movie Fizzles somewhat as action it's because Besson seems more interested in engaging playfully yet seriously with the various biological philosophical and metaphysical riddles that his story raises pointedly Lucy gets a couple of eloquent monologues in which to ponder such weighty matters as the impermanence of all life the preciousness of every moment the human tendency to prioritize feeling overthinking the depressing myopia of human experience in general and the fact that life gains meaning only with the passage of time one reason Lucy emerges an enjoyably nutty diversion rather than a self-important log is that it pays DEA knowing homage to any number of Hollywood sci-fi Head trip Classics embedding its ideas in a dense Labyrinth of cinematic references that somehow end up feeling Sly rather and shopworn in trying to locate Mankind's precarious position within the greater Cosmic order while also anticipating the literally mind blowing next phase of human evolution besson's film carries unmistakable traces of both 2001 and the Tree of Life some of it even takes place in outer space Lucy's gradual rise to omniscience and omnipotence recalls Neo's own such journey in The Matrix while her many black suited Korean opponents suggest another Army of agent Smith Asian Smiths and in those moments when Lucy uploads herself Big Brother style to every computer and TV screen in the vicinity the movie can't help but suggest a livelier less ponderous remake of this year's similar themed Transcendence not least among these Illusions to other movies are the obvious Echoes of besson's own like La fem Nikita Leon the Professional and The Fifth Element before it Lucy is a slickly engineered showcase for a kick-ass heroine whom we instinctively unhesitatingly root for it also feels like a calculated bid for popularity with a younger American audience that may be unfamiliar with this particular GAC genre Maestro the taken movies he produced not withstanding certainly after the Bland history lesson of the lady and the joyless familyfriendly shenanigans of the Arthur Trilogy this is easily the director's most alert energized and recognizable piece of Direction in years a movie that with its muscular widescreen imagery vibrant streaks of color and pulsing musical beats as well as its occasional tonal missteps and moments of unintentional hilarity feels unmistakably like the work of its director in the end though it's Joe Hanson our resident Avatar of the otherworldly who goes the furthest in bringing all these disperate elements together in her the actress gave voice to a higher more sophisticated form of Consciousness and in under the skin she managed the tricky feat of regarding Humanity through alien eyes in some ways Lucy represents the point at which both roles converge and Johansson has the unusually difficult job here of subtly conveying her character's observations reactions and eventual epiphanies in a mostly dead pan flattened out register that becomes only more subdued as the film progresses somehow she succeeds beyond all reason indeed during the movie's ludicrous bordering on Sublime final minutes mark by whooshing camera movements and a highly malleable sense of time it's hard not to wonder if Lucy fully free at last and with infinite possibilities at her fingertips might be intended as a hopeful thinly veiled standin for Besson himself not for nothing one suspects is the character's first name but one letter removed from his own Scarlet Johansson The Avengers plays a woman forced to be a mule for some drug dealers with very little regard for human life but when the bag of drugs and her stomach breaks and the drug seeps into her bloodstream Lucy gains superhuman abilities like she's a cross between a superhero a Jedi Knight and Neo from The Matrix there's a lot to love about Lucy not only does the movie move along at a nice clip but it has some rather visually engaging scenes though many of them were in the trailer and Scarlet Johansson is perfect for this role as she's as Adept at playing scared and vulnerable as she is playing someone with real or unreal as the case may be power thankfully she has some equally strong actors to play against most notably Min sick Choy old boy who viciously chews up every scene he's in as the leader of the drug dealers lies entirely with Besson both as writer and director for starters not a lot happens which is both good and bad had anyone else made this movie Lucy would have used her powers to go on a bloody Revenge trip complete with over-the-top destru slow-mo Gunplay and spectacular explosions but bessin and thus Lucy takes a different approach which is interesting and unexpected except that there's not a lot to it while you may not be able to guess where this is going from the general premise once you've seen it it doesn't take more than a sentence or two to explain everything that happens in fact Besson actually pads out the movie a bit by illustrating certain points with stock nature footage though some of it does make more sense when you get to the end which causes the second problem the movie's pointlessly pretentious visual style the film's use of nature footage along with some needless slowmo gives this movie an artsy feel but it's one it really doesn't need at least not to this degree again I appreciate Bess in trying to do something different had Lucy been a Michael Bay movie it would have been two hours of slow mo cleavage and Fireballs but it really doesn't work for this story it's almost like Besson was trying to make a 2001 kind of movie when he should have been trying to make the Matrix and as a result he ended up with an artsy version of Commando and since Johansson and Choy are both magnetic in it it's hard to say that Lucy isn't worth seeing maybe not full price at a theater but certainly at a matina or at home if you have a nice home theater set up just make sure you suspend your disbelief before sitting down because Lucy stretches credibility quite often at the very least try not to laugh too loud when the cops show up and don't notice the drug kingpin and his henchmen fiddling with large guns nearby one last thing I'm sure some critics will dismiss Lucy by saying it's like a video game but for once they're kind of right well about the game part not the dismissive part Lucy's Powers level up and she gains new abilities as she reaches certain Milestones but these elements don't weaken Lucy as a cinematic experience if anything if Lucy had gotten all of her powers all at once this movie would be even shorter and have even less going on than it already does it takes a movie like Lucy to fully reveal the inadequacy of rating a movie on a 5point scale or any other standardized measure for that matter in any objective evaluation it is lacking any number of areas and I'll get to some of those in a minute this is objectively not a good movie and yet I enjoyed nearly every moment of it it's a be movie running around in $40 million of Hollywood finery which is probably what we should have expected from a movie written and directed by Luke Besson Lucy Stars Scarlett Johansson as Lucy a vapid aimless 20-some living in what I initially took to be Japan but I think was actually supposed to be Singapore it really doesn't matter and neither does what she's doing there pretty soon she's conned into making a delivery to a crime kingpen who has all the requisite men in suits and fancy amenities for her delivery boy boyfriend things go downhill from there as the drop doesn't go as planned and she's forced into being a mule for the crime syndicate the helpless girl becomes less so however when the baggie of drugs implanted in her stomach bursts and she begins to be able to access higher percentages of her cerebral capacity off the old we only use 10% of our brains idea it's at about this point that the movie starts intercutting Lucy's tribulations with Morgan Freeman as Professor who researches such things he's giving a lecture on brain capacity which means he's basically doctor Exposition so the audience can keep up with the changes Lucy is undergoing though for shorthand you can just think Neo at the end of The Matrix but even more of an expressionless Cipher and you're most of the way there it's funny to juxtapose Scarlet Johansson's Sublime performances in recent movies like her and Under the Skin whatever I thought of that movie overall Johansson was phenomenal with a movie like this both of those films were so concerned with character with details with a finer points of performance and theme and Lucy is um not oh Johansson is still pretty good but she's Hamming it up and she probably knows it so when drugs start seeping into Lucy and she's uncontrollably shaking her way across the floor walls and sealing of the cell she's being kept in you're pretty sure besson's attention was not on the precise nature of the way Johansson was shaking watching her have a seizure across every surface of the room is kind of weird and funny and sort of effective allinone but the movie is way more concerned with the more direct idea the drugs are reacting inside her body and taking it over that's the beauty of the film okay maybe beauty is a strong word but that's why I suppose I reacted more positively to this movie when I criticize others for being derivative this is undoubtedly a familiar film one that hits expected action movie beats even when they don't make much plot sense but it also introduces just enough visual flare that I said a okay and rolled with it when police cars go flipping through the air the movie might lag a bit with a sense of been there done that but when even an on theose attempt is made to marry the creation sequences from the Tree of Life and footage from a nature special to an action film of about Far Eastern Mafia chasing a powerful but limited heroine you have to grin a little in appreciation does any of that mean Lucy is perfect heck no the good mood I had from some enjoyable music during the intro credits was just about ruined by an overactive editing finger in the first scene with Lucy when she argues with her boyfriend about making the delivery for him there are entire sequences well really most of the plot that make little sense other than as a mechanism for moving things forward particularly the early non-death of a main character when the newly empowered Lucy has previously shown no qualms about killing there's plenty to roll your eyes at and yet Abandon All logic ye who enter here because we are about to start talking Lucy you might want to leave reason and Science by the door while you're at it you won't have much call to use either of those for the next 90 minutes or so French action aour Luke Besson has made his version of 2001 or at least his tree of life and it is a wild wild time people are going to walk into what they think is a Scarlet Johansson fronted action movie and have their minds broken this is very much not the movie you were led to expect but got him if it isn't a total freaking blast there will be those who law this as the most fun movie of The Summer While others will condemn it as complete and utter nonsense and somehow they'll both be right right away you learn that Lucy is like a roller coaster when that big metal restraint clanks down over your shoulders to hold you in place you're like it I'm here and all you can do is throw your hands in the air and scream we as the propulsive momentum whips your head back and forth and pummels your common sense this is like the meth addicted sibling of transcendence it's strange and funny sometimes deliberately other times unintentionally so but it's always exciting and unpredictable you can never be sure what crazy is about to come around the corner but after the main character starts disintegrating in an airplane bathroom everything is up for grabs much has been made of this film being based on that we only use 10% of our brains myth which as you probably know is total but if you can look past a radioactive spider bite causing superpowers or gamma radiation turning an angry man big and green you can get past this besides you have way way bigger hurdles to get over Lucy Johansson is a student in Taipei through a series of events that are like a bad urban legend cautionary tale she winds up with an unwanted parcel of a new drug stitched into her belly when it invariably ruptures pumping magic purple dust into her bloodstream she gains access to as yet unexplored regions of her brain unlocking all kinds of cool powers like being able to control every cell in her body every once in a while the film flashes a little card that counts down how much of her brain she's used using like at 60% she turns a Chinese gangster into an inadvertent mime while all of this is going on B and cuts in stock nature footage intended to illustrate the Predator PR Dynamic natural selection at work and all kinds of animals humping all over the place often with a JY tune superimposed over the images it's bizarre depending on your perspective the editing is either brilliant or insane jux opposing footage of natural disasters and Chaos with the Comm dulet tones of Morgan Freeman's Professor Norman an expert in this non-science there's no real goal or narrative thrust or Point Lucy is little more than a buildup to 100% where action scenes like in crazy ass car chase through the streets of Paris happen for no solid reason in this case her only explanation is we're late ostensibly Lucy is after the rest of the drugs while over the toop Crime Boss Mr Jang old boy choy men sick chases her every step of the way that's about it you're never entirely sure what she is trying to accomplish but watching her go about her business is damn entertaining Lucy tries to be scientific it isn't it tries to be philosophical and fails in miserable fashion and it wants to be smart so damn bad but it just isn't in any way what the movie is however is totally audacious and nuts the work of either a genius or a lunatic or both full of action movie tropes that Besson helped create like a character clutching two guns walking in slow motion as classical music plays in my book Besson is every bit as responsible for overexposing this kind of flare as John Woo or my personal favorite a camera background and character all spinning at spinning at the same time but at different speeds outside of the First Act where there is some sharp dialogue and snappy negotiations Johansson doesn't do much acting wise aside from Keanu Reeves flat delivery from The Matrix but after that watching her kick ass and fling people around like she's a Jedi Knight using the force is way more fun than it reasonably should be Freeman is there to sound soothing like he knows what he's talking about and to add an air of class to the proceedings which he doesn't everyone else is just a play thing for Lucy's whims a canvas to show off her newly acquired skills and abilities like making stock bad guys levitate and flail around like turtles stuck on their backs every summer there is one movie that flies under my radar one that I know is coming but I'm not super invested in but winds up surprising the hell out of me and being totally awesome this year that movie is Lucy delirious and gleeful bessen has created something bizarre and outlandish that is totally ludicrous in the best possible way by the time Lucy is blasting back through history to the very origins of the human race everything is so chaotic and insane that you can't help but we're a huge eating grin this is a hard movie to recommend because while I loved it many people will absolutely despise every frame if you're looking for something batshit crazy and more than a little mind-boggling Lucy may be just what you're looking for in Taipei Taiwan Lucy Scarlet Johansson is an everyday American girl who is studying abroad when her new boyfriend Richard pis beak causes her to become caught up in a ruthless Asian drug ring the criminal gang led by Mr jenman siik Choy used Lucy and three other captives as vessels to transport a new unstable drug to various parts of the world when the bag of drugs implanted inside Lucy starts leaking her cells start reproducing at an alarming rate and the more the drugs spread throughout her system the more she starts to unlock the potential of her mind according to scientist Professor Norman Morgan Freeman whose lectures in Paris are intercut with Lucy's experiences in Taiwan we only use 10% of our mental capacity and as the drug charges Lucy's system she is able to tap into more and more of her brain power as Lucy comes to terms with her new abilities and travels to Paris to meet with the professor she simultaneously seeks revenge on Mr Jang and his minions and employs the assistance of Parisian law enforcement agent Pierre Del R ammer wait to do so as soon as the film opened with colorful Graphics of cells reproducing alongside Eric Sarah's funky score I knew I was going to love this film and as the film progressed I was not disappointed the whole concept may be a bit over elaborate with the Dual storyline of Lucy wreaking havoc on the Asian drug lords whilst also liasing with the professor and discovering her heightened abilities and Besson May delve too far into the science fiction genre for my liking towards the end of the film but these are my only criticisms yes the narrative does become more than a little far-fetched in the Final Act and yes Lucy's superhuman skills are quite difficult to believe but the film is so thrilling that it's easy to overlook these flaws I must admit that I am extremely partial to Scarlett Johanson as I said in my review of Captain America the Winter Soldier I absolutely idolize her apparently Angelina Jolie was originally considered for the role and although she is another favorite of mine I am very glad that Scarlet was cast instead we have seen enough of Angelina in these types of roles in films such as salt and Lara Croft Tomb Raider so it's refreshing to see someone new step up to the plate Scarlet has previously proved herself in physical roles such as in her portrayal of the black window in multiple Marvel films however this is the first time I have seen her bring to life such a strong female heroine that has the power and depth to carry an entire film as a lead character from the very opening scene Scarlet Nails it she fully embodies the character and demands your attention when she transitions into a robotic version of Lucy when she has lost her Humanity as a result of the effects of the drugs Scarlet is equally strong Morgan Freeman and the minor cast members all deliver satisfactory performances whilst none of them are outstanding no one is noticeably weak either in a way I think this is effective as it allows the spotlight to shine more upon Scarlet as their performances support her rather than overshadow her although his role in the film is fairly brief pis beak is definitely the standout among these additional cast members unlike a lot of directors in this day and age Luke Besson is not one to roll out one film after the other as if he is working in a factory whilst he has numerous writing and producing credits to his name he only takes on the occasional project as a director and these films are always memorable from The Fifth Element to Leon the Professional this French filmmaker often directs films centered around powerful female characters such as his early '90s film life M Nikita and one of his more recent releases the lady I felt as though Lucy was very reminiscent of Life M Nikita and I think Besson must be rather connected to the subject matter of this '90s film as he has also written the American television series based around the same concept which is just known as Nikita Lucy has the same dark and Sinister tone as lefm Nikita but it's quite a bit more glamorous with the big Hollywood special effects and epic action sequences taking place in major cities whereas laem Nikita was done on a much smaller scale in both films Besson starts off the narrative in the middle of a scene and leaves the viewer to put the puzzle together and draw their own conclusions which I really enjoy the First Act of Lucy is so suspenseful because first of all you are trying to figure out who this main character is and what is going on and then as one shocking event after the other unfolds you are left feeling just as frightened and tense as Lucy is both you and her try to learn the endgame of the drug lords I am a huge fan of besson's choice to intercut a lot of the First Act with shots of Nature and animal behavior that reflect what is happening in the narrative this technique easily could have come across as jaring but somehow it really worked his attention to detail is also astounding for example in the beginning Scarlet wears chipped silver nail polish but once she starts reaching into higher percentages of her brain's capacity and is able to control the growth and color of her hair her nail polish becomes perfect and smooth whether this decision was the choice of the designer or a direct product of besson's vision is yet to be seen but either way it is an indication of how much thought goes into besson's films I briefly mentioned Eric Sarah's score up above and I have to say it's one of the greatest scores I've heard this year second probably only to the score in Only Lovers Left Alive it's eclectic and modern and although at times it draws attention to itself which normally I don't like it suits the story and the visual style so well that it doesn't matter that it's so noticeable in fact I preferred it this way Eric Sarah has worked on most of besson's other films as has cinematographer tiar arbag Gast and the camera work is absolutely beautiful in this film The cinematography does get a little lost in between so many other excellent elements but there are some gorgeous shots in there the special effects are also very impressive with an Inception like moment where gangsters are swimming in midair as if gravity has ceased to exist on the surface Lucy's premise sounds plausible enough even though it's based on a debunked urban legend the idea goes something like this human beings typically utilize only about 10% of their cerebral capacity not true so what would happen if a person could open up all the unused neural Pathways and access 100% the movie goes on some Flights of Fancy in following this to its improbable conclusion but although one might deem besson's resolution to be Preposterous it's never uninteresting although the movie eventually transforms into something odd it begins in a traditional bessen is fashion which is to say with Fast Cuts violence and warped humor Lucy Scarlet Johansson is in the wrong place at the wrong time she is tricked by her soon to be ex-boyfriend into delivering a locked briefcase to a gangster Mr Jang Min siik Choy who is not sympathetic to Lucy's predicament after forcing her to open the briefcase which contains a new kind of experimental drug Mr Jen takes Lucy prisoner inserts a bag of the drug into her stomach and forces her to work as his mule however rough treatment at the hands of one of Mr jang's thugs causes the bag to break and the drug leaks into Lucy's system there are two consequences to this her brain capacity begins to increase and she becomes terminally ill she seeks out brain expert Professor Norman Morgan Freeman who spends much of the movie in Exposition mode in an attempt to understand what's happening to her meanwhile Mr Jang and his men track Lucy with the goal of killing her before she becomes too power F to take out the plot element involving the bad guys in Lucy feels almost irrelevant Mr Jang isn't threatening and bessin doesn't take the time to make him into anything more Sinister than a cartoon character once Lucy has begun to evolve there's no sense that she's in danger Lucy is more about her journey what she's becoming and what its implications are for Humanity Besson doesn't provide all the answers the ending is saturated with ambiguity Scarlett Johanson 's presence combined with the way in which the movie concludes brings a forceful echo of her some viewers left that movie scratching their heads that will be even truer of Lucy Universal has done this movie A disservice by positioning it as a mainstream action thriller and hinting that Lucy is an X-Men style mutant who will use her powers to do all sorts of crowd-pleasing things instead this is closer to an art housee film than a mainstream offering and the Hue and cry from those expect ing The Summer's next big Blockbuster will be loud indeed sure there's plenty of action in Lucy but it's not of the Rah R sort this is a more contemplative sort of Motion Picture the climax in particular although as visually impressive as it is bizarre Tree of Life anyone is more likely to frustrate than satisfy this Defiance of expectations done with bold-faced irreverence allows Lucy to work on its own terms there are plenty of plot related issues not the least of which is that the film's science is wrongheaded in many ways but it's hard not to be impressed by a movie that pushes forward relentlessly without being predictable I value films even flawed ones that have the capacity to surprise me audiences in general will probably react negatively to Lucy but that's more the fault of the promoters and marketers than it is of the men and women who crafted it this is a fine quirky sci-fi offering that will appeal to those who aren't in the theater for the reasons most people will be hello movie lovers welcome to my YouTube channel where we dive deep into the world of Cinema and explore the magic of the Silver Screen today we're stepping into a film that promises to capture our imagination and stir our emotions so grab your popcorn settle in and let's embark on this cinematic journey together ready to find out if Lucy 2 is a mustsee or a Miss let's get started Lucy 2 is an upcoming French science fiction action film will be written and directed by Luke Besson and produced by his wife virgin Bess andilla for his company europacorp it will star Scarlet Johansson Morgan Freeman Choy Minick and ammer wake Johansson portrays the titular character a woman who gains psychokinetic abilities when a neut Tropic drug is absorbed into her bloodstream Imagine A Stranger in a Strange Land Revenge Thriller about a wide eyed Anglo bombshell Scarlet Johansson who gets kidnapped and abused in Taiwan by nasty sweaty shouting Korean gangsters and then escapes to seek Justice then imagine this same movie starring say a lightning fast kickboxer who can knock a dozen opponent's teeth out before they can raise a single fist now imagine this same movie injected with a dose of apocalyptic Science Fiction with the woman gaining strange Powers as the story unfolds then Envision midnight movie touch Tes mixed into the film making Flash cuts of predators and prey enhancing otherwise typical scenes of plans being hatched monologues about brain capacity and the true meaning of time coupled with psychedelic visions and wormholes and explanatory objects materializing from thin air that's Luke besson's Lucy a thriller about an American woman who gets kidnapped into Service as a drug mule bearing an experimental synthetic hormone accidentally absorbs some of it then sheds her physical intellectual and perceptual limitations I could describe five or six other kinds of movies that in some way also Echo Lucy sections May remind you of the original The Matrix and the last hour of Akira and the final 10 minutes play like a greatest hits of Science Fiction trip movies you've seen a lot of the individual situations and film making techniques in Lucy as well in fact you'd be hardpressed to identify one idea scene or element in the picture sure that is not a cliche but the total package feels fresh from the minute that Johansson's Title Character suffers a beating in captivity that ruptures the drugs in her stomach and releases them into her bloodstream a Yankee nightmare the film enters a realm of continual Delight though not always surprise there's no point naming any of the other major characters as there really are no other characters only types the Arrogant fat cat drug dealer Choy Minik who thinks he can control the short blonde drug mule and learns the hard way that he can't the brilliant deep-voiced scientist Morgan Freeman who else whose theoretical studies of the human brain's untapped potential make him an information source and then finally a kind of partner savior to Lucy the handsome nice guy Parisian cop ammer wed who assists Lucy during her climactic mission to acquire more of the experimental hormone to ingest and become whatever it is that she's becoming a 1950s sci-fi monster probably the kind that cannot be killed because everything you shoot at it makes it stronger and hungrier Lucy is little more than a type herself a representative of humanity in its unmutated nons superstate Johansson's mid-career transformation from husky voiced in genu to intensely physical matina Idol is one of the more fascinating arcs in American Cinema it's only her control over her body voice and eyes and maybe our awareness that her performances in this movie her and under the skin are all of a piece Lucy even uses the phrase Under the Skin at one point that stops Lucy from being tiresome her work keeps us from realizing that besson's script has botched the chance to tell a deeper Story one that's not just bombastically exciting and superficially clever but quietly tragic Lucy starts with shots of the prehistoric ape woman Lucy and periodically returns to her throughout the story not too subtly comparing the heroin's transformation to that of the species itself from Evolution to Revolution to quote one of the script's more pungent phrases and yet there are only two moments that make us really understand and empathize with Lucy as something other than a cipher who represents the unevolved human one is an early scene of her being terrorized and abused by Taiwanese drug thugs Lucy's abject helplessness here is hard to watch the other occurs deeper in the story when Lucy realizes she's about to embark on a terrifying and probably one-way transformative journey and phones her mom the scene is shot mostly in tight closeup the dialogue has a goofy pran boldness I remember the taste of your milk in my mouth I want to thank you for a thousand kisses that I can feel on my face that scene is so brazenly powerful that in retrospect it made me wish the main character had gone on a journey with more emotional gradations heck I'd have settled for more than the two that Bess and DS to give us oh my God these guys want to kill me and I am God watch me kill these guys when the hormones enter Lucy's bloodstream it's as if a switch has been flipped the heroine starts speaking in monotone and tilting her head at looming men like a quizzical bird regarding a worm that it's about to devour she's woman as Terminator the Terminator is a great movie monster but there's a reason why it's a supporting character in the films that bear its name like many films by Besson the professional The Fifth Element the messenger and other high octane shoot him UPS Lucy starts out riveting but becomes less engaging as it goes along it keeps introducing potentially Rich narrative veins and then failing to tap them it too often falls back on Gunplay and Gore just when you think it might finally delve into the Notions that it keeps serving up with such Fanfare a falseness of the idea of uniqueness the self-defeating nature of a species more concerned with having than being time as the one true unit of measure nevertheless Lucy is a fun confident work it's fast and tight and playful even when it's sadistic and violent which is often it lasts about 90 minutes and change but feels longer in a good way because every second is packed tight it's full of itself yet it still keeps winking at you it wants to be taken seriously but not so seriously that you don't laugh at and with a sight of Lucy strolling into a gunfight wearing no bleed heels or making enemies RI like marionet on invisible strings the movie is alive a fantasy about unlocking 100% of the brain's potential that expects viewers to be using just two or 3% of their own gray matter Luke Besson Lucy plays more like a big dumb superhero flick than sci-fi the pow Scarlet Johansson gains when given full access to her brain quickly outstrip anything one can imagine three pounds of skull bound neurons and synapses being able to do Besson script offers neither the well-drawn character Dynamics nor the clear motivations of a decent comic book origin story and as it is quickly clear that nobody has much chance of stopping Lucy action sequences carry little weight a top shelf cast and the fading memory of besson's action hits will help the picture at the box office but word of mouth is unlikely to keep it alive long after a strong opening weekend Johansson's character begins as a party girl studying in Taipei whose new boyfriend Julian Ryan Tut is involved in bad stuff thanks to him she winds up being an unwilling drug mule for Jang Choy Min siik making the most of a role that forces him to speak through interpreters a big bag of a super drug called cph4 is sewn into her guts awaiting transport to New Markets in Europe but the bag Springs a leak when Lucy is roughed up by her captors entering her system in such quantities Q fun CG shots of cellular level Transformations that it activates huge chunks of cranial real estate she'd never been able to access before like that little known lobe that lets you turn off gravity when it suits you helpfully Besson has been cutting between Lucy's story and an academic lecture in Paris where researcher Samuel Norman Morgan Freeman has been hypothesizing about the very thing that is happening to her making remarkably specific predictions about what might happen if humans were able to use more than the 10% we currently use a myth by the way of the magnificent supercomputers in our heads his ideas like some of the film's other early scenes are Illustrated with cutaways to Nature footage suggesting the ways in which all of Earth's creatures are interconnected governed by the same laws think Luke Besson doing the Tree of Life the early stages of Lucy's transformation offer plenty of kicks and even a touching moment or two after making her badass escape from Jang and his thugs she struts into the nearest Hospital's operating room shoots the patient on the table a glance at the x-rays told her the patient brain tumor was inoperable and has a surgeon pull out the remaining drugs planted inside her forgoing anesthesia she borrows the surgeon's phone and calls her mother while he cuts her open describing what's going on in her head mom I can feel everything she says as the camera almost imperceptibly rocks Sensations and emotions stretching back to her birth are available to her triggering what proves to be almost the last humanlike response she has in the film from here on out Johansson's performance grows colder and more analytical Besson doesn't let her become as persuasively alien as she is in Under the Skin but he doesn't want a human either Lucy sets out to round up other batches of the drug and get to Paris where she can let Dr Norman see his theories in action why do this one wonders when in a matter of minutes she has already read his thousands of pages of research and surpassed his understanding plenty of films and novels have envisioned what would happen if we gained conscious control over our entire brain While most would probably make a real neuroscientist cackle uncontrollably it's hard to recall one whose ideas were more laughable than this one we may roll with the film as its heroine learns Taiwanese over the course of a cab ride or sees the electromagnetic spectrum of self phone calls swiping through them as if she were reading their conversations on a touch screen we may even buy it when she's able to change her body at will sure growing a webbed hand would take some time and fuel but at least a body's cells are controlled by its brain but the film gives not the slightest justification for Lucy's increasingly Godlike abilities which soon include time travel and levitation every now and then a nugget of real philosophy is dropped into the screenplay but it surrounded by so much blather that even a generous viewer has trouble using it to justify what Lucy experiences even more damning in an action film Bess and dos out powers in a way that nullifies much of the drama to come once we've seen this woman put an entire room of people to sleep with a wave of a hand why would we be worried for her when a smaller gang is pointing guns at her and why wouldn't she just pull the same trick here instead of wasting her time with shower and less believable feats the movie occasionally attempts to make Lucy's Quest accessible to Mortal viewers though she doesn't need the assistance of a French cop named Del Rio ammer wake for instance she keeps him with her as a reminder of her fading Humanity but the reality based action a long wrong way trip through Paris traffic a showdown with gangsters who want their drugs back feels irrelevant to what the film really wants to show us unfortunately though it concludes with a line suggesting Lucy has finally found all the answers Lucy never tells us what the question is although it represents a significant role of the dice as the most expensive project ever undertaken by the filmmakers eurac Corp shingle Lucy should capitalize on its strong International elements and Johansson's Bank ability to become besson's biggest worldwide hit as a director since the Fifth Element no small feat for an s/x heavy original property in this over franchised day and age and unlike that bloated night 1997 dystopian Juggernaut the film manages to clock in at a surprisingly sleek and Multiplex friendly 88 minutes and its abrupt but elegant conclusion has the Curious benefit of making this extravagantly silly entertainment seem somehow smarter and more enigmatic in retrospect than it does while it's unfolding certainly the opening scenes don't Inspire much confidence that Besson is operating at anywhere near his full intellectual capacity or that he expects any such smarts from his audience after a brief prehistoric flashback to the dawn of man the film quickly deposits Us in present day Taipei where Lucy Johansson a hard partying American blonde finds herself lured into the web of a ruthless Korean Crime Boss named Mr J the splendidly villainous Choy men sick this entire sequence is laughably intercut with nature dock footage of cheetahs pouncing on their prey just in case we fail to grasp our heroin's trapped condition terrified out of her mind Lucy is forced to become a drug mule with a bag containing a highly potent synthetic substance called cph4 sewn into her stomach when the bag bursts Bess and happily supplies a visceral closeup of her insides Lucy not only miraculously survives the overdose but also begins to experience some unintended and not entirely unwelcome side effects the reason soon becomes clear rather than being restricted to the use of a mere 10% of her brain she is suddenly able to access 20% and then 30% and so on an unprecedented feat whose implications are unpacked at some length by the paris-based researcher Professor Norman Morgan Freeman the well-documented fact that humans actually do use most of their brains manages to debunk the movie's premise without in any way detracting from its loopy Pleasures Lucy's condition manifests itself gradually at first then in ever grander and more astonishing ways no longer count towering in fear she's now an expert assassin who quickly frees herself and turns the tables on her captors although she's largely immune to pain her powers of sensory perception reach superhuman levels of Acuity a phenomenon visualized by Besson and his visual effects team as an endless network of data streams invisible to the naked eye she absorbs vast quantities of data especially foreign languages in record time and develops the ability to manipulate matter telekinetically which as Lucy learns comes in pretty handy whether you're trying to disarm an opponent or weave your way in and out of traffic but even as her cognitive command increases the film keeps upping her brain percentage every 10 minutes or so so does her awareness that she will not be able to survive much longer in this state as her trillions of cells each one now uniquely empowered begin to behave in the manner of a rapidly metastasizing cancer one particularly dazzling CG sequence set aboard an airplane reveals her individual particles struggling to break free of their corporeal prison and so not unlike The Poisoned hero of the 1950 Noir DOA Lucy finds herself in a Race Against Time and her own body traveling from Taiwan to France visually speaking that means from taipe 101 to the Eiffel Tower she's aided by the good professor and a bemused cop Egyptian actor ammer w in her quest to bring her enemies to Justice and also to use her Superior knowledge for the good of Humanity on an almost admirably perverse level Lucy isn't really much of a thriller it's virtually an anti- Thriller devoid of suspense or any real sense of danger due to the fact that its heroin is more or less Invincible at times it's hard to shake the sense that a smarter more unbridled picture might have found a way to slip the bonds of genre altogether but if the movie Fizzles somewhat his action it's because Besson seems more interested in engaging playfully yet seriously with the various biological philosophical and metaphysical riddles that his story raises pointedly Lucy gets a couple of eloquent monologues in which to ponder such weighty matters as the impermanence of all life the preciousness of every moment the human tendency to prioritize feeling overthinking the depressing myopia of human experience in general and the fact that life gains meaning only with the passage of time one reason Lucy emerges an enjoyably nutty diversion rather than a self-important slog is that it pays DEA knowing homage to any number of Hollywood sci-fi Head trip Classics embedding its ideas in a dense Labyrinth of cinematic references that somehow end up feeling Sly rather than shopworn in trying to locate Mankind's precarious position within the greater Cosmic order while also anticipating the literally mindblowing next phase of human evolution besson's film carries unmistakable traces of both 2001 and the Tree of Life some of it even takes place in outer space Lucy's gradual rise to omniscience and omnipotence recalls Neo's own such journey in The Matrix while her many black suited Korean opponents suggest another Army of agent Smiths Asian Smiths and in those moments when Lucy uploads herself Big Brother style to every computer and TV screen in the vicinity the movie can't help but suggest a livelier less ponderous remake of this year's similar themed Transcendence not least among these Illusions to other movies are the obvious Echoes of besson's own like La fem Nikita Leon the Professional and The Fifth Element before it Lucy is a slickly engineered showcase for a kick-ass heroin whom we instinctively unhesitatingly root for it also feels like a calculated bid for popularity with a younger American audience that may be unfamiliar with this particular GAC genre Maestro the taken movies he produced not withstanding certainly after the Bland history lesson of the lady and the joyless familyfriendly shenanigans of the Arthur Trilogy this is easily the director's most alert energized and recognizable piece of Direction in years a movie that with its muscular widescreen imagery vibrant streaks of color and pulsing musical beats as well as its occasional tonal missteps and moments of unintentional hilarity feels unmistakably like the work of its director in the end though it's Joe Hansson our resident Avatar of the otherworldly who goes the furthest in bringing all these disperate elements together in her the actress gave voice to a higher more sophisticated form of Consciousness and in Under the Skin she managed the tricky feet of regarding Humanity through alien eyes in some ways Lucy represents the point at which both roles converge and Johansson has the unusually difficult job here of subtly conveying her character's observations reactions and eventual epiphanies in mostly dead pan flattened out register that becomes only more subdued as the film progresses somehow she succeeds beyond all reason indeed during the movie's ludicrous bordering on Sublime final minutes marked by whooshing camera movements and a highly malleable sense of time it's hard not to wonder if Lucy fully free at last and with infinite possibilities at her fingertips might be intended as a hopeful thinly veiled standin for Besson himself not for nothing one suspects is the character's first name but one letter removed from his own Scarlet Johansson The Avengers plays a woman forced to be a mule for some drug dealers with very little regard for human life but when the bag of drugs in her stomach breaks and the drug seeps into her bloodstream Lucy gains superhuman abilities like she's a cross between a superhero a Jedi Knight and Neo from The Matrix there's a lot to love about Lucy not only does the movie move along at a nice clip but it has some rather visually engaging scenes though many of them were in the trailer and Scarlet Johansson is perfect for this role as she's as Adept at playing scared and vulnerable as she is playing someone with real or unreal as the case may be power thankfully she has some equally strong actors to play against most notably menick Choy old boy who viciously chews up every scene he's in as the leader of the drug dealers lies entirely with Besson both both as writer and director for starters not a lot happens which is both good and bad had anyone else made this movie Lucy would have used her powers to go on a bloody Revenge trip complete with over-the-top destruction slowmo Gunplay and spectacular explosions but Besson and thus Lucy takes a different approach which is interesting and unexpected except that there's not a lot to it while you may not be able to guess where this is going from the general premise once you've seen it it doesn't take more than a sentence or two to explain everything that happens in fact Besson actually pads out the movie a bit by illustrating certain points with stock nature footage though some of it does make more sense when you get to the end which causes the second problem the movie's pointlessly pretentious visual style the film's use of nature footage along with some needless slowmo gives this movie an artsy feel but it's one it really doesn't need at least not to this degree again I appreciate Bess in trying to do something different had Lucy been a Michael Bay movie it would have been two hours of slow mo cleavage and Fireballs but it really doesn't work for this story it's almost like Besson was trying to make a 2001 kind of movie when he should have been trying to make the Matrix and as a result he ended up with an artsy version of Commando and since Johansson and Choy are both magnetic in it it's hard to say that Lucy is isn't worth seeing maybe not full price at a theater but certainly at a matina or at home if you have a nice home theater set up just make sure you suspend your disbelief before sitting down because Lucy stretches credibility quite often at the very least try not to laugh too loud when the cops show up and don't notice the drug kingpin and his henchmen fiddling with large guns nearby one last thing I'm sure some critics will dismiss Lucy by saying it's like a video game but for once they're kind of right well about the game part not the dismissive part Lucy's Powers level up and she gains new abilities as she reaches certain Milestones but these elements don't weaken Lucy as a cinematic experience if anything if Lucy had gotten all of her powers all at once this movie would be even shorter and have even less going on than it already does it takes a movie like Lucy to fully reveal the inadequacy of rating a movie on a fiveo scale or any other standardized measure for that matter in any objective evaluation it is lacking any number of areas and I'll get to some of those in a minute this is objectively not a good movie and yet I enjoyed nearly every moment of it it's a be movie running around in $40 million of Hollywood finery which is probably what we should have expected from a movie written and directed by Luke Besson Lucy Stars Scarlett Johansson as Lucy a vapid aimless 20s something living in what I initially took to be Japan but I think was actually supposed to be Singapore it really doesn't matter and neither does what she's doing there pretty soon she's conned into making a delivery to a crime kingpen who has all the requisite men in suits and fancy amenities for her delivery boy boyfriend things go downhill from there as the drop doesn't go as planned and she's forced into being a mule for the crime syndicate the heless girl becomes less so however when the baggie of drugs implanted in her stomach bursts and she begins to be able to access higher percentages of her cerebral capacity off the old we only use 10% of our brains idea it's at about this point that the movie starts intercutting Lucy's tribulations with Morgan Freeman as Professor who researches such things he's giving a lecture on brain capacity which means he's basically doctor Exposition so the audience can keep up with the changes Lucy is undergoing though for shorthand you can just think Neo at the end of The Matrix but even more of an expressionless Cipher and your most of the way there it's funny to juxtapose Scarlet Johansson's Sublime performances in recent movies like her and Under the Skin whatever I thought of that movie overall Johansson was phenomenal with a movie like this both of those films were so concerned with character with details with a finer points of performance and theme and Lucy is um not oh Johansson is still pretty good but she's Hamming it up and she probably knows it so when drugs start seeping into Lucy and she's uncontrollably shaking her way across the floor walls and ceiling of the cell she's being kept in you're pretty sure besson's attention was not on the precise nature of the way Johansson was shaking watching her have a seizure across every surface of the room is kind of weird and funny and sort of effective allinone but the movie is way more concerned with the more direct idea the drugs are reacting inside her body and taking it over that's the beauty of the film okay maybe beauty is a strong word but that's why I suppose I reacted more positively to this movie when I criticize many others for being derivative this is undoubtedly a familiar film one that hits expected action movie beats even when they don't make much plot sense but it also introduces just enough visual flare that I said a okay and rolled with it when police cars go flipping through the air the movie might lag a bit with a sense of been there done that but when even an on the- nose attempt is made to marry the creation sequences from the Tree of Life and footage from a nature special to an action film about Far Eastern Mafia chasing a powerful but limited heroine you have to grin a little in appreciation does any of that mean Lucy is perfect heck no the good mood I had from some enjoyable music during the intro credits was just about ruined by an overactive editing finger in the first scene with Lucy when she argues with her boyfriend about making the delivery for him there are entire sequences well really most of the plot that make little sense other than as a mechanism for moving things forward particularly the early non-death of a main character when the newly empowered Lucy has previously shown no qualms about killing there's plenty to roll your eyes at and yet Abandon All logic ye who enter here because we are about to start talking Lucy you might want to leave reason and Science by the door while you're at it you won't have much call to use either of those for the next 90 minutes or so French action aour Luke Besson has made his version of 2001 or at least his tree of life and it is a wild wild time people are going to walk into what they think is a Scarlet Johansson fronted action movie and have their minds broken this is very much not the movie you were led to expect but gotam if it isn't a total freaking blast there will be those who L this as the most fun movie of The Summer While others will condemn it as complete and utter nonsense and somehow they'll both be right right away you learn that Lucy is like a roller coaster when that big metal restraint clanks down over your shoulders to hold you in place you're like it I'm here and all you can do is throw your hands in the air and scream we as the propulsive momentum whips your head back and forth and pummels your common sense this is like the meth addicted sibling of transcendence it's strange and funny sometimes deliberately other times unintentionally so but it's always exciting and unpredictable you can never be sure what crazy is about to come around the corner but after the main character starts disintegrating in an airplane bathroom everything is up for grabs much has been made of this film being based on the we only use 10% of our brains myth which as you probably know is total but if you can look past a radioactive spider bite causing superpowers or gamma radiation turning an angry man big and green you can get past this besides you have way way bigger hurdles to get over Lucy Johansson is a student in Taipei through a series of events that are like a bad urban legend cautionary tale she winds up with an unwanted parcel of a new drug stitched into her belly when it invariably ruptures pumping magic purple dust into her bloodstream she gains ACC access to as yet unexplored regions of her brain unlocking all kinds of cool powers like being able to control every cell in her body every once in a while the film flashes a little card that counts down how much of her brain she's using like at 60% she turns a Chinese gangster into an inadvertent mime while all of this is going on bessen Cuts in stock nature footage intended to illustrate the Predator PR Dynamic natural selection at work and all kinds of animals humping all all over the place often with a JY tune superimposed over the images it's bizarre depending on your perspective the editing is either brilliant or insane ju opposing footage of natural disasters and Chaos with the calming dulet tones of Morgan Freeman's Professor Norman an expert in this non-science there's no real goal or narrative thrust or Point Lucy is little more than a buildup to 100% where action scenes like in crazy ass car chase through the the streets of Paris happen for no solid reason in this case her only explanation is we're late ostensibly Lucy is after the rest of the drugs while over the toop Crime Boss Mr Jang old boy's Choy men sick chases her every step of the way that's about it you're never entirely sure what she is trying to accomplish but watching her go about her business is damn entertaining Lucy tries to be scientific it isn't it tries to be philosophical and fails in miserable able fashion and it wants to be smart so damn bad but it just isn't in any way what the movie is however is totally audacious and nuts the work of either a genius or a lunatic or both full of action movie tropes that Besson helped create like a character clutching two guns walking in slow motion as classical music plays in my book Besson is every bit as responsible for overexposing this kind of flare as John Woo or my personal favorite a camera background and character all spinning at spinning at the same time but at different speeds outside of the First Act where there is some sharp dialogue and snappy negotiations Johansson doesn't do much acting wise aside from Channel Keanu Reeves flat delivery from The Matrix but after that watching her kick ass and fling people around like she's a Jedi Knight using the force is way more fun than it reasonably should be Freeman is there to sound soothing like he knows what he's talking about and to add an air of class to the proceedings which he doesn't everyone else is just a play thing for Lucy's whims a canvas to show off her newly acquired skills and abilities like making stock bad guys levitate and flail around like turtles stuck on their backs every summer there is one movie that flies under my radar one that I know is coming but I'm not super invested in but why ends up surprising the hell out of me and being totally awesome this year that movie is Lucy delirious and gleeful Besson has created something bizarre and outlandish that is totally ludicrous in the best possible way by the time Lucy is blasting back through history to the very origins of the human race everything is so chaotic and insane that you can't help but we're a huge eating grin this is a hard movie to recommend because while I loved it many people will absolutely despise every frame if you're looking for something batshit crazy and more than a little mind-boggling Lucy may be just what you're looking for in Taipei Taiwan Lucy Scarlet Johansson is an everyday American girl who is studying abroad when her new boyfriend Richard pis beak causes her to become caught up in a ruthless Asian drug ring the criminal gang led by Mr jman siik Choy used Lucy and three other captives as vessels to transport a new unstable drug to various parts of the world when the bag of drugs implanted inside Lucy starts leaking her cells start reproducing at an alarming rate and the more the drugs spread throughout her system the more she starts to unlock the potential of her mind according to scientist Professor Norman Morgan Freeman whose lectures in Paris are intercut with Lucy's experiences in Taiwan we only use 10% of our mental capacity and as the drug charges Lucy's system she is able to tap into more and more of her brain power as Lucy comes to terms with her new abilities and travels to Paris to meet with the professor she simultaneously seeks revenge on Mr J