Does humanity not live up to its full potential? Are we only using 10% of our mental capacity, or does it just feel that way? Would we believe anything we were told by Morgan Freeman? 'Lucy' is a film that asks all these questions, and tries to answer many more!
Lucy (Scarlett Johansson) is put into an unfortunate circumstance when her boyfriend makes her deliver a mysterious briefcase to a mob boss. From here the mysterious contents of the briefcase - a drug called CPH4 - gets implanted inside her so she can get it into America. The drug, however, starts to leak inside her, prompting her cognitive capacity to rise from the “average” 10% to well... 100%.
This is potentially one of the strangest and silliest films of the year. In the same vein as ‘Pacific Rim’, it could either be one of the most awesome dumb movies ever, or the dumbest awesome movie ever. The film definitely shows the potential power of a Morgan Freeman narration, but this really only serves to be clunky and expositional in an attempt to get the audience’s head around the “science” (yes inverted comma science) of the plot. It is one of ‘Lucy’s' biggest ironies that in becoming superhuman, Johansen is more robotic than her character in ‘Her’.
SWITCH: 'LUCY' TRAILER
Luc Besson has boldly written and directed ‘Lucy’ - and with some of the most cringe-worthy lines of dialogue and a plot that is almost just as jarring, it was a brave feat indeed. A highlight for me involved a line about remembering the taste of her own mother's breast milk – which produced audible groans from other audience members. That said, if you let yourself get swept along in the sci-fi and the action, you’re in for an unintentionally funny thrill ride. And if you try to understand why things are happening the way they are, the simple answer is: because science – that’s why.