Remember that scene in Star Wars: Episode I: The Phantom Menace where Qui-Gon Jinn explained Midichlorians to young Anakin? It gave a dull explanation as to how The Force exactly worked, irking fans and casual moviegoers alike. Sometimes explanation is nice, but most of the time, moments full of heavy handed exposition regarding how exactly things work in a movie becomes more cumbersome than enlightening. Lucy is pretty much a 90 minute long Midichlorian sequence, despite some ambitious filmmakings choices and the presence of Scarlett Johansson.
Now, Luc Bessons, who wrote and directed this film, obviously wants Lucy to be more than just some nonsensical punching, which is appreciated. His sense of scope and the ideas he tries to convey recall more Terrance Malick than Michael Bay, if that makes any sense. In the opening sequence, which contrasts Lucys encounter with some villanous henchman with an antelope being stalked by a cheetah, shows that Besson has his sight set much higher than the generic (but effective) marketing campaign suggests. Unfortunately, his main plot is stupid as all out, which directly contrasts with its lofty thoughtful ambitions. Still, when you trot out that "We Only Use 10% Of Our Brains" myth as the centerpiece of your plot, how much intellect can your story truly convey?
You see, as Lucy gains more and more brain functioning, she also gets superpowers, which seem to be grabbed out of a hat of generic superpowers (super-intelligence and telepathic abilities are used a lot) The superpowers feel sort of ridiculous to simply come from one drug, but it would be more than forgivable if Lucy was actually interesting. Amazingly, these guys absolutely squander Lucy as a character, and even more heinously, squander the immense acting talent of Scarlett Johansson. We don't spend much time with Lucy before she becomes superpowered, which really doesn't leave the audience with much of a personality to grab onto. To boot, it means there's not much contrast in Lucy before and after she gets superpowers, rendering her dull for most of the picture.
Which is a shame, because there's one great scene where Lucy calls her mother just after acquiring all these new powers. Johansson sells the emotion in this scene far better than other action stars, like Jason Statham or Dolph Lundgreen, could, and just reaffirms what a waste it is not giving her more to do. But at least she gets to have a scene with emotion; Morgan Freeman is reduced to just explaining stuff. Now, this is obviously his primary job in other movies (like in the nicely entertaining Now You See Me), but elsewhere, he wasn't required to do it so goshdang much. And y'know, in those other movies, what he said was actually interesting. Seriously, the characters drone on and on, explaining why all of this so cool, but I wish we could have actually seen in a visual sense why these were so neat. The closest we get in that regard is Lucy smashing some cars in a boring car chase sequence.
But just when I wanna write the movie off entirely, Besson manages to actually do something interesting. I'll give him this, the dude knows how to execute tension when he wants to. A scene where Lucy marches towards the man who put the drugs inside her, with operatic music accompanying her, is splendid to watch. And while well made moments do pop up, as well as ones just bizarre enough they register as "You-Gotta-See-It-To-Believe-It" bits (this is the last movie I'd ever think would involve potentially huge religious ramifications), but otherwise, Lucy is a slog of a movie, held back by stupidity and a waste of an extremely talented lead actor.
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