Lucy
Being ambitious with your script isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Except, you have to know how to embellished with facts, entertainment and that takes a lot of hard work. A prime example is the Wachowski siblings. You just have to look at their most recent work. Sense8, Cloud Atlas and Jupiter Ascending were all extraordinary feats of imagination but had different levels of success with Cloud Atlas being a soaring adaptation of David Mitchell’s novel. The other two are middling and downright awful with Sense8 struggling with its concept and Jupiter Ascending being wickedly entertaining because of how atrocious it is. See extraordinary stories are important but they falter if the final product isn’t up to scratch.
Luc Besson hasn’t shyed away from ambitious work with The Fifth Element and Leon the Professional under his belt. Yet Lucy, his recent science fiction escapade, delves into the heart of expanded minds and yet his drive is truly his downfall alongside a shaky character and lack of utilising the acting tools he has at his disposal.
Lucy is the story of the titular character who is spending most of her time partying in Japan. When her boyfriend forces her to deliver drugs to a lucrative crime boss, he is promptly shot and Lucy kidnaped. With the drugs surgically attached to her stomach, she is made to be a mule but it all goes crazy when she is kidnapped again and the contents spill inside her. However, the illusive drug infects her blood steam and starts doubling her brain power, giving her all sorts of brain powers that Charles Xavier would be jealous of. As the Japanese Mafia are after her, Lucy begins to play with them and seeks the answers to her condition.
Why is it Bad?
Besson plays hard and fast with the mythology of accessing your brain functions more than the percentile we use. And scientists were very quick to call bullshit despite their inability to appreciate the fantastical elements of this. Yet they hold an extraordinarily good point here because the dissolve into ultimate intelligence (said loudly with a Schwarzenegger accent) is so over the top that it ricochets with this cheap underbelly of style over substance. There’s an air of craziness that dampens the final product, pushing fact to deliver action.
But what is more extraneous than this is taking away the personality of Lucy when her IQ increases which is detrimental to the film and character. Using Johansson as this robotic vessel and device for all the action is a waste of the actress’s talent. It also plays into the cliché that emotion is derivative like many smart people on television. The devoid feelings in Lucy negate her personality that was set up greatly. Why can’t we have both? It’s typecast and exhaustingly dull.
Why is it Good?
Hey ho - despite these issues, Lucy is still wickedly entertaining. The film has this air of “stick a finger up at the cynics” and allowing the ride to play out as is. The quibbles I mentioned before are irritating, true. But they boil underneath that endorphin side of you that screams “YES!” when Johansson flips men in the air like garbage. It’s almost like this is the closest we’ll ever get to having a Black Widow movie and we’ll almost except anything at this point. Plus, visually, it is stunning.
Look it’s rambunctious and straps you in for some thrills. Plus it has Oldboy’s Choi Min-sik in it, though he is heavily underused. Good for some ironically mindless fun.