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Lucy

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Lucy (Facebook)
Lucy (Facebook)
What it's about:

An action-thriller that tracks a woman accidentally caught in a dark deal who turns the tables on her captors and transforms into a merciless warrior evolved beyond human comprehension.

What we thought:

If you ever saw Bradley Cooper’s Limitless, then Lucy is kind of like that, but on LSD. In both movies a drug gives an unassuming slacker access to unused parts of the brain and turns them into some demi-god. Whereas Limitless was more subtle in its message and actually realistic, Lucy tries to visually assault your brain and cross into the realm of ridiculous sci-fi.

Sometimes you weren’t sure if you were a watching a science-fiction movie or an episode of Cosmos on Discovery Channel. I get the producers were probably trying an unique technique to give the film an artistic edge, but when a tense climactic scene keeps getting cut inbetween with a cheetah hunt then you are left wondering – huh? The metaphor was so glaringly obvious that it became even more obscure about why it was included at all. But wait, there is more.

Throughout we are subjected to random cuts of humanity and nature visuals until, when Lucy finds transcendence, we finally get to see the Big Bang. Beautifully done? Yes. Too much? Most definitely.

Director Luc Besson is most known for his cult classic The Fifth Element, which is one of those trademark sci-fi movies that set a precedent for the genre. Besson really tried to make Lucy into another iconic female protagonist, but Scarlett Johansson’s wooden performance of someone who is losing their humanity made her just that – an organic computer with no real connection with the audience – which is the complete opposite of her computer voice in Her.

Add  to this the illogical plot, ludicrous ‘powers’ that she starts to develop and incredibly questionable science (you don’t have to be Neil deGrasse Tyson to figure that out) you get a hashed out movie where you sometimes wonder if someone was smoking something questionable. Everything was thrown together into a pot of superfluous garble, including a short-lived and not-thought-out romance between Lucy and a French cop who just blindly follows this crazy chick out of nowhere.

Gun fights, drug cartels, brain science, Morgan Freeman,  Johansson in a tight white top and a trip through space and time. All this make it sound like a B-grade movie that probably blackmailed A-list actors into it. I mean, you had to have read the script and at one point thought, “Is Besson on crack?” Whatever the movie was trying to say – I have no clue – it gets all thrown out the proverbial Cosmos window by bad science and horrendous plot. Even if science is not your forte, this will hurt the 10% of your brain you are apparently using.
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