Review of Lucy (2014) by Russell G — 23 Mar 2016

Do not go into this looking for Luc Besson to rekindle the magic of the Fifth Element. The marketing made it seem like it would be a Borne Identity type of action movie with a vixen wielding guns and outthinking everyone.

If we got that movie, everyone would be happy, but instead this is a messy and overly ambitious misfire. Scarlett Johansson plays a simple woman taken prisoner by vicious drug lords and forced to smuggle surgically implanted experimental drugs in an airplane.

Not everything goes as planned and a large amount of the drug releases into her system. The newly developed drug unlocks the full potential of the human brain, whereas we only use ten percent of our brains.

The rest of the movie is a jumbled yet gradual increase in her brain potential. There is no interesting goal for her to achieve other than to pass on her knowledge to humankind. She grows smarter and more powerful, but she becomes too powerful.

Accessing her full potential of her mind allows her to read minds, control gravity, generate matter, contort her body, read and see electrical signals. No one can challenge her; maybe even Superman would have tough time dealing with her.

She is too strong to the point where it is ridiculous, and it becomes hard to care about anything. No one else takes the drug with evil intentions where she has an equal opposition. In fact, after an early scene in the movie, the undeveloped villains do not do anything but add pointless action filler.

Some of the visuals are impressive, but the artistic cut scenes from the animal kingdom and Morgan Freeman lecturing about the concept of the full potential of the brain do not work. They kill the momentum and any suspense the movie has.

There is tons of potential to work with here, but it does not work on any level.