673. Lucy (2014)

Starring: Scarlett Johansson, Morgan Freeman, Min-sik Choi

Director: Luc Besson

Running Time: 89 mins

Lucy is a French film about a woman who, after being captured by the Taiwanese mafia and having drugs placed in her intestines, gains the extraordinary power of harnessing 100% of her brain capacity, allowing her to move and be outside of all that humans believe is possible.

Well, this was an extremely boring, confusing and idiotic film. It’s got a fun premise on the face of things, but it doesn’t deliver in the slightest, ultimately mixing itself up between some sort of gritty crime drama and a bizarre sci-fi theme, while the performances by Scarlett Johansson and Morgan Freeman were incredibly disappointing.

First things first, the story in this film was appallingly bad. I wasn’t so bothered about the fact that the 100% brain power makes you a superhero thing wasn’t true, because it’s meant to be a bit of fun science-fiction, however the actual plot and tension that was trying to be built was almost incomprehensible.

The main issue was that this film didn’t know what itself was. It tried initially to be a gritty crime thriller, then switched to mad sci-fi, then back to crime, then to sci-fi, and in the end, it was a completely weird mix of two genres that just didn’t fit together at all.

What made all this worse was the fact that ‘Lucy’ was effectively an invincible superhero for her time like this. That meant that all the tension that the plot tried to build was evaporated instantly, as there was no peril whatsoever for our main character, as it seemed as if she could easily bat off any opponent in the universe, making it a hugely dull affair.

However, there’s yet another side to the story that falls flat on its face. The whole idea is that, while she can get 100% of brain power, it’s going to kill her within 24 hours or so, and a large portion of the plot aims to feed on the unpredictability of when she will die and what will happen when she dies, but that whole plot line was incredibly boring and didn’t instil any fear or excitement in me whatsoever.

Away from the terrible story, the CGI was surprisingly laughable. For a $40m sci-fi production, you’d expect some pretty dazzling effects, but it was very rudimentary stuff, often worse than that due to a weird mix of colours and dimensions that often made me feel sick.

Finally, the performances were also pretty appalling. Morgan Freeman played the very clichéd and plain role of the exposition guy, and he was frankly tedious to watch, but Scarlett Johansson was incredibly wooden in her acting. I understand that the super Lucy was meant to be a bit more robotic and ruthless, but even in some of the deeper stages of the film, there was very little to be impressed by in terms of Johansson’s acting.

Overall, then, this gets a 5.0, because of a dull, convoluted story, horrible special effects and terrible acting, plus a constantly irritating attempt to be as important and profound as something like 2001: A Space Odyssey.