Film Review: Lucy

Lucy. Rated MA15+ (strong themes and violence). 89 minutes. Written and directed by Luc Besson.

Verdict: A fine idea about our human potential is wasted in this violent fantasia.

Like Neil Burger’s Limitless (2011), Besson’s exploration of the effect of mind-altering substances on the human brain promises the world and delivers very little. It all starts smartly enough, with Lucy (Scarlett Johansson) and her new boyfriend Richard (Pilou Asbæk) arguing over who will deliver a briefcase with mysterious contents to a guest at a fashionable hotel in Taiwan.

When Richard is ruthlessly dispatched, Lucy becomes an unwilling accomplice to an international crime syndicate, who surgically implant a plastic bag full of blue crystallised powder into her stomach. When the plastic bag breaks as a result of one of Besson’s many random acts of gratuitous violence, her body absorbs the substance, resulting in rapidly escalating superhuman powers.

Known for his sci-fi thriller The Fifth Element (1997) and as one of the writers of Taken (2008) and Taken 2 (2012), Besson’s obsession with violence reduces what might have been a film of great ideas to a veritable bloodbath. Morgan Freeman, as the stately professor who Lucy finds to help her understand her new-found neurological potential, spends much of the time looking dazed and confused by all the silliness going on around him.

Johansson works wonders with the questionable ethics and morals of the material, and while she is a much better actress than most of it, the depth of her engagement with the character ensures that the film works a good deal more effectively than it might have.

But within all the ill-conceived chaos, lies a fine idea about just how little of our potential we realise throughout our lives. Why Besson didn’t chose to make a film about this far more interesting thread instead of the clichéd, drug-dealing gangsters plot, will forever remain a mystery.

This review was commissioned by the West Australian Newspaper Group.