Review of Lucy (2014) by Facebook U — 13 Mar 2016

One of the most nonsensical films I've seen in a long time. Ignore the enormous fallacy that is "humans only use 10% of their brain." Ignore too the fact that none of what she does actually has anything to do with increased brain capacity and is strictly a nutty superhero fantasy.

No, the main problem is that the plot is scattershot and worthless. It bounces from A to Q without ever explaining why any of this is happening. Character motivations are nonsensical. Lucy is on some sort of entirely unexplained quest to save mankind (I think?) and yet she also goes around murdering innocents in cold blood (including a random cab driver and a patient strapped to an operating table who was in her way).

Yet by the end she refuses to kill anyone (even when it would have solved the main external conflict) and is treated as basically a saint. Did they forget the first part of the film happened? Speaking of external conflicts, the main villains are drug dealers who inexplicably want to market a drug that turns people into superhumans as some sort of high instead of as pretty much anything else.

And they spend the entire film chasing her for what reason? To get two bags of the drug back? Is that it? Isn't it just a wee bit implausible to have them charge heroically into combat when they've just watched their guns disintegrate? And are we honestly expected to believe that she's in any real threat once we've established that she can do things like that? She exists as a dea ex machina.

Only Morgan Freeman's motivation makes any sense and that's because he's just a noble scientist dude.