LUCY

After being coerced by her boyfriend to deliver a briefcase to a group of unsavoury characters, Lucy finds herself in a world of trouble. The group are Chinese drug dealers who extort Lucy into smuggling a new synthetic drug as a drug mule. Things go from bad to worse when the drugs inside Lucy leaks into her bloodstream, making her go through unthinkable changes. The drug activates dormant portions of the human brain giving Lucy super powers which she will use to retrieve the remaining drugs while battling the drug dealers.

“The average person uses 10% of their brain capacity. Imagine what she could do with 100%” is the tagline of the movie. Although it's enticing to watch Lucy increase her mind power and display more amusing abilities as the film progresses, unfortunately the story doesn't progress far enough.

As soon as she reaches 20% Lucy's only intention is to get her hands on the bags of drugs inside the other drug mules. Her motivation is not to take revenge on the drug dealers for the trauma she has had to undergo, instead all she wants is to reach 100%. Even her sense of moral judgement gets a bit askew, she had no issues killing the first group of gangsters at the hotel yet she let the main drug boss live after only stabbing him in the palms. Wouldn't her life have been so much simpler with the boss completely out of the picture?

Apart from the utterly nonsensical story, this film does have a few good qualities worth mentioning. Leading lady Scarlett Johansson is wonderful to watch. Her transformation from being a scared fragile girl to a cold disconnected God-like being is enjoyable. The shots are vivid and the cuts are crisp. The action scenes and chase scene are exciting in typical Luc Besson fashion. The use of animal documentary clips as metaphors for what is about to happen to Lucy is interesting. The visual highlight for me is the brief time-travel sequence which is quite engrossing.

Ultimately this film's dilapidated plot is it's downfall. Lucy is like the steroid injected version of Limitless (2011). Both films use a mind augmenting super drug as the main plot device. Writer/ director Luc Besson seems to have made this film simply to include as many cool super powers as he could get away with. A common trait in most Luc Besson films is his use of strong female characters. La Femme Nikita (1990), The Fifth Element (1997), The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc (1999) and now Lucy all contain tough female protagonists. But in this particular instance the strong female lead has been given a weak replica of another weak storyline. If this film was made as an audition to direct an actual superhero movie in the near future, I hope for Besson's sake that he'll get a call from Marvel Studios or Warner Brothers. But on it's own this film only offers senseless entertainment, just remember to watch it when your brain is at 1% capacity.

Rating: 5/10

S. V. Fernando