Luc Besson, best known for his film The Fifth Element, turns his talents to one of the summer's anticipated science-fiction action films, Lucy, which he directed, wrote and edited.
Lucy stars Scarlett Johansson in the leading role as the title character, a unsuspecting party girl, who after a fateful encounter with a Korean drug boss (Choi Min-sik), is forced into becoming a drug mule for a mysterious new drug; CPH4. After the bag leaks while inside of her, Lucy starts to develop new superhuman abilities as her brain is able to quickly use more than 10% of its capacity, prompting her to seek out help from Dr. Norman, portrayed by Morgan Freeman. On her escapades, she also manages to run into French Police Chief, Pierre Del Rio (Amr Waked).
The concept of the film is certainly intriguing; you probably won’t see anything like it this year. It seems evident that Besson’s latest cinematic venture achieves mixed results – the action sequences are delightfully thrilling without overdoing it, and the visuals are arguably some of the best of the year. However, the abundance of visual metaphors and some painfully slow pacing (particularly towards the beginning of the film) makes it a little uneasy to watch. You end up get the feeling that the director should have approached this at full volume, and made the film have a more frenetic pace, and really gone all out with the special effects; that the trailer suggested. Arguably, the sequences shown in the trailer are the highlights of the film, and this can feel a little disappointing when you gear yourself up for the hour and a half thrill ride that you were expecting, only to find this is not the case. Fortunately, in the more captivating sequences, the film is clearly on a momentum, and benefits from effortlessly cool performances from Johansson and Freeman.
In regards to Johansson and Freeman, the two make for a surprisingly delightful pairing, and Johansson’s transformation with her character is delivered in a suitably calculated fashion. Prior to becoming a drug mule, Johansson’s bambi-esque naivety is a strong contrast to the logical, almost cold and emotionless demeanour that her later self expresses, once the drugs have entered her system and she is ‘super-human’.
Freeman provides a professional contrast to the no-nonsense Lucy of late, as his research as Professor Norman provides the basis for the film’s trajectory. Sufficed to say, Freeman is perfectly suited in his intelligent character, and is an intriguing match to Johansson. A moment of light relief in the film comes courtesy of Amr Waked, who stars at the everyday French police chief, Pierre Del Rio, and his bewilderment with Lucy as a character mimics the feelings some audience members might have to her; the representative of the audience itself. Waked and Johansson’s characters also share some more emotional, human moments as Lucy is becoming more devoid of her conventional humanity.
To say the ending was surprising would be an understatement; it seemed obvious that certain things would have to give if she was really going to self-combust when she reached 100%. However abrupt, the ending felt a little anticlimactic, despite being conventionally ‘satisfying’, and this could have possibly been explored more, as it seemed like throughout the film there was never really a particular ‘goal’ as to what we were heading for. There are certainly a few unanswered logical questions that hinder the film from reaching its very own 100%. However, the thrills are there at certain places, and it’s suitably silly and intriguing as a concept and as said, the visuals are pretty remarkable, and the piece is interesting as a conceptual film about life as we know it, even if the facts aren’t always there.
The point is, the film knows it’s a little silly, and it plays off this well, even if it doesn’t quite manage to reach its full potential, taking into account its talented cast and the clear draw that female leads are having over recent years (see: The Hunger Games, Maleficent and others). With this new level of appeal surfacing for female leads, Lucy had much potential to become a strong science-fiction action film, but its gaps in logic and uneven pacing hinder it from being a true success. With that said, Besson’s Lucy deserves at least one watch, even if it is just for Johansson’s enthusiastic and devoted performance.
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