Review: Lucy

Scarlett Johansson plays the title character, a seemingly vacuous American party girl in Tapei who makes the mistake of acquainting herself a few days ago with loser dickweed Richard (Pilou Asbaek), who asks her…then forces her to deliver a briefcase up to a hotel room. She’s handcuffed to the case and only the man upstairs she is to meet with, can unlock her. That man is a gangster played by Choi Min-shik, and he’s a no fucking around kinda guy. When the briefcase is opened, inside we find a new drug and before long, Lucy is turned into a reluctant drug mule, as this new drug is placed inside her abdomen as she is forced to smuggle the drugs to somewhere in Europe. Things go wrong, Lucy is beaten up, and the plastic bag inside her bursts, causing the drug to enter her bloodstream. This drug has the effect of greatly enhancing the percentage of her brain able to be accessed and used, from the supposedly initial 10%. So what does a hot chick with an enhanced brain do with all that grey matter? Kick revenge-minded butt, apparently. Morgan Freeman turns up as a scientist and professor, whose help Lucy calls upon (and who bullshits…er…informs us that we only use up to 10% of our cerebral capacity), whilst Julian Rhind-Tutt plays a droll and dapper crim, and Analeigh Tipton plays Lucy’s party girl pal.

 

I have no problems accepting a man from another planet who can fly. A cute, pot-bellied alien coming to Earth to touch our hearts? I’m down with that. Time-travel? If it’s done well, yes I can even believe that for two hours or so. It’s called science-fiction, for a reason, folks, and so long as there is internal logic, I can accept practically anything under that banner. Suspension of disbelief. However, every once in a while I come across something like this 2014 film from writer-director Luc Besson (“The Professional”, “The Fifth Element”, “The Family”), which is also a sci-fi film, but a terribly misguided one. This is a film founded on a premise that involves something presented as an already accepted scientific fact (that is, it’s saying we already do only have access to 10%, not what if we did only have access to 10% of our brain’s capacity), but which is actually science-bullshit of the highest order. I’m sorry, but this film’s stupid, easily debunked starting-off point immediately sealed its fate, as far as I’m concerned. I knew it was doomed going in, and I only watched it so that I could review it, and present you with my thoughts on it for you to make of them what you will. I’m eagerly anticipating any intellectual debate.

 

You see, like “Limitless” (a better, but similarly conceptually flawed film), this film’s plot depends upon the stupid myth that human beings only use a certain percentage of our brains and don’t have access to the rest. Although we don’t use 100% of our brain capacity all of the time, we do indeed have access to all 100% of it. Despite what defenders of this film might tell you, Besson (who apparently took almost 10 years to get this film project going. I mean, WOW!) is not presenting the 10% myth as science-fiction. It’s not using the 10% myth in the same way “Back to the Future” uses time-travel. You’re aware going into “Back to the Future” that time-travel is not real, and the film merely only wants you to pretend it’s real for two hours. Here, the sci-fi elements are to do with the rest of the film, with what Scarlett Johansson deals with as more and more of her brain capacity is accessible. The 10% aspect, delivered in a speech by that most trusted voiceover artist Morgan Freeman (who narrates science docos on TV all the time), is presented matter-of-factly, literally stated as a supposedly already established scientifically proven fact. So Besson (who I repeat, had almost 10 years to get this right!) wants us to imagine a world that is exactly the same except humans don’t have the same brain capacity that we actually do have? That’s stupid, and it immediately kills the film for anyone who is aware of this idea being factually bullshit.

 

And that’s a true shame (see what I did there?), because if Besson had found a way for Johansson to have all these intellectual powers and so forth that didn’t involve the 10% myth being presented as real, the film might’ve actually had some merit as entertainment. The scenes where Johansson gets to experience the history of the planet, even prehistoric are fascinating to ponder, and since she has at this point access to the memories of everyone and everything, it’s certainly more acceptable in its own sci-fi universe than the 10% myth. But because it does indeed use the 10% myth as its supposedly factually-derived genesis, the whole thing is rendered completely useless as an overall film.

 

I also call into question the title character’s apparent intelligence, given at one point she’s describing a substance as purple powder, when anyone who isn’t stupid or colour-blind can tell that it looks exactly like bright blue crystals, and they’re hardly granular in size. Blue. Crystals. Sigh. Then again, this is a film that is smart enough to know that our knowledge of life and the world is based on the codes and meanings (numbers, for instance) that we have come up with based on our limited capabilities, yet suggests time is the only true thing. That’s not entirely accurate, when you think about it for even a moment. Sure, we grow old, the days come and go, that’s all obvious. However, we ourselves give these things their numerical values. So even when it gets something right, the film still can’t get it quite right (It’s also an issue I had with “In Time”, where time literally was money). Also not helping things are the annoying directorial tricks used by Besson, like all the wildlife inserts that frankly don’t belong.

 

Like “Limitless” I found the film also lacking in imagination, with Besson using this character’s brain capacity for scenes of Scarlett Johansson firing guns and kicking butt. Yawn. Definitely not helping things is Scarlett Johansson’s typically forced and unnatural performance. She’s such a pretentious and awkwardly mannered actress, but this may be her worst effort to date. She plays this whole scenario like she’s an autistic alien inhabiting a human body for the first time. When you think about it, that’s pretty idiotic. There’s an interesting idea here about Johansson slowly losing her humanity as she becomes more intellectually powerful, but Johansson plays it in the least interesting and most heavy-handed way possible. Meanwhile, the scene where she inexplicably and instantaneously changes hair colour is so impossible that it’s 110% stupid. Morgan Freeman, meanwhile, Michael Caine’s his way through the film, he surely knew that the 10% thing was bullshit and clearly doesn’t care so long as he gets to put that extension on his summer house. On the plus side, bad arse “Oldboy” star Choi Min-shik (whose mere presence is awesome), “America’s Next Top Model” alum Analeigh Tipton (a real cutie who might just make it to lead roles one day soon), and the awfully dapper and soulless Julian Rhind-Tutt steal their every scene, which in all three cases isn’t nearly enough.

 

There’s nothing worse than a film that thinks it’s smart, but is founded on bullshit. A failure on arrival, this film might’ve been better if reworked to have a different starting point. However, it’d still have Scarlett Johansson trying and failing to act, and Besson’s uber-pretentious filmmaking to its discredit. A dud, and a shameless use of Morgan Freeman to try and lend it some credibility. In fact, it will remind you of another sci-fi film he was in that wasn’t very good, “Transcendence”. If, like Mr. Besson himself you give no fucks whether we only use 10% of our brain’s capacity or not, perhaps you’ll get more enjoyment out of this than me. I probably got about 10% worth of enjoyment out of it myself, give or take.

 

Who knew being super-smart turned you into a kick-arse assassin?

 

Rating: D