Luc Besson’s latest cinematic opus begins with an image of a cell splitting in two, and then again, before cutting to a scene in which we witness an early primate scooping water from a tranquil, prehistoric lake. We then hear the dulcet tones of Scarlett Johansson’s voice telling us that “Life was given to us a billion years ago.” There’s a brief pause before she poses the question: “What have we done with it?” The answer that this film purports to provide is: quite a lot, actually… but nowhere near as much as we might.
The action kicks off in Taipei, in Taiwan, outside a hotel, where Scarlett Johansson—in the role of the title character—is involved in an argument with her new boyfriend, Richard, after a night on the razz. Richard wants her to deliver the briefcase he’s holding to a Mr Jang, who is apparently waiting inside the hotel. After failing to persuade her to do his dirty work, Richard handcuffs the briefcase to Lucy’s wrist and shoves her in the direction of the hotel lobby. Any questions you might have at this point, about what the hell this young couple is doing in Taiwan, or why the film is even set here, are soon forgotten as Besson ramps up the drama almost immediately with the introduction of an extremely sinister-looking mob of what are later revealed to be Korean drug traffickers, who snatch Lucy and drag her to a top-floor suite where the mysterious Mr Jang is waiting. We get an early taste of the slightly ham-fisted way in which this film attempts to tie in a natural history-based theme during this scene, as Besson splices it with National Geographic-style shots of wild cheetahs hunting, and eventually catching, a young gazelle. Pretty clever, huh? Um, no. Not really. But again, whatever, because the tension has already reached skyscraper-high heights, with Johansson looking genuinely terrified as she faces her resolutely non-English-speaking captors. The ruthless Mr Jang—played by Choi Min-sak, and arguably Besson’s best baddie since Gary Oldman in Leon—forces Lucy to open the briefcase, which contains several batches of a new drug, ready for distribution across Europe. We remain on the edge of our seats until Lucy—now carrying a bag of this new drug (a synthetic version of CPH4) in her abdomen—suffers a beating at the hands of an over-amorous captor and absorbs a significant quantity of it into her system. At this point, things start to go awry, in more ways than one, as Lucy is suddenly able to access a much higher percentage of her cerebral capacities…
Meanwhile, somewhere in Paris—naturellement—Professor Samuel Norman (Morgan Freeman) expounds his theories on the human brain and speculates on… yep, you guessed it, what might happen were we able to access a higher percentage of our cerebral capacities. After escaping her captors, and upon realising that she has just a few hours to live, Lucy contacts Professor Norman and sets up a meeting with him. At the same time, she alerts the authorities in Paris of CPH4’s imminent arrival. From here on in, you are—by and large—best off leaving behind your own brain in favour of simply enjoying the thrill-ride on which Lucy takes you.
Johansson is undoubtedly the film’s primary attraction, as well as its main driving force, and she is wholly convincing in the role of the eponymous heroine. Lucy also contains all the hallmarks of classic Besson in terms of thrills n’ spills: there are stand-offs, gun-fights, and an absolutely ludicrous high-speed car chase through the streets of Paris. The film raises some interesting questions, too, though it doesn’t hang around long enough to answer them with any real profundity. It is also, unfortunately, ridden with clichés, hackneyed visual motifs and under-developed plot ideas, from Lucy’s drivel-spouting room-mate, and the use of Tree of Life-style images of placid lakes and erupting volcanoes, to the barely touched upon romance between Johansson’s character and the French police captain (Amr Waked) and as a result Lucy veers dangerously close to a ninety-minute version of that godawful Chanel advert starring Kiera Knightly that was shown before the film’s trailers. Thankfully, though, through a combination of Johansson’s impressively nuanced performance and unflinching commitment to the role, and Besson’s renewed penchant for hi-energy, effervescent film-making, Lucy succeeds in justifying its own existence.
Matt Pucci
[Rating:3]
