Lucy review

LUCY:

SCARLETT JOHANSSON USES 100% OF HER BRAIN AND KICKS BUTT, HOWEVER THE FILM FEELS LIKE IT ONLY USES 50% OF ITS BRAIN!

By Nico Beland

Movie Review: *** out of 4

UNIVERSAL PICTURES

Scarlett Johansson using 100% of her brain as Lucy

            Director and screenwriter, Luc Besson (The Fifth Element, Taken, The Family) returns with his latest thriller from EuropaCorp, Lucy, in which Scarlett Johansson (The Avengers, Her, Under the Skin) stars as a young woman who, after a gruesome operation, learns how to enhance her brain. While the setup of the film is clever and it keeps you guessing until the very end of the film, it’s not a completely perfect thriller, it does seem to tackle various elements from other sci-fi films like The Matrix, Limitless, and most recently, Transcendence, but it certainly doesn’t make the film terrible nor is it worth missing.

            Studies have shown that the average person uses 10% of their brain capacity. That is until an everyday young woman named Lucy (Scarlett) is called in to deliver an important package to a group of ruthless thugs in Taiwan, what’s in the package you may be asking yourself? It’s packets of a powerful drug that can enhance the human mind.

            Soon she is forced into working as a drug mule for the mob because they surgically inserted an entire package of the drug into her body and it may end up killing her. Lucy asks for the aide of Professor Samuel Norman (Morgan Freeman-The Shawshank Redemption, The Dark Knight trilogy, Transcendence), who has been studying the effects of the human brain and what could happen if someone uses the entire 100% of it.

            In time, Lucy discovers what she can do with her brain, she develops the abilities to hack into various electronic devices such as television sets, computers, and phones, levitate objects and people, and she can read minds and memories. It’s up to Lucy, Samuel, and his team of scientists to test the effects of the drug before the mob finds Lucy and puts an end to her life.

            Overall, Lucy is a fun and entertaining action thriller, not exactly high hard, but strong popcorn fun for the summer. The action is gripping and keeps you on the edge of your seat, the plot is complex, but not extremely complex like Inception or any of the other films directed by Christopher Nolan, the special effects are impressive, and Scarlett is a strong female lead who can still kick butt, just like her performance as Black Widow/Natasha Romanoff in Iron Man 2, The Avengers, and Captain America: The Winter Soldier, honestly if this was a Marvel movie, this would have been an interesting way to tell us Natasha Romanoff’s backstory in The Avengers.

            But as is, it’s an entertaining action movie with some cool effects, no more, no less. However the ending of the film is rather weak and familiar, a very similar ending to the movie, Transcendence (which also starred Freeman), it doesn’t mean the film is bad and lacks creativity, no it’s pretty damn creative when it comes to depicting what Lucy is seeing during the drug effects, plus I do prefer this film over Transcendence.

            If you want to take a break from all those loud explosion fests of the summer and enjoy something with a clever concept and twists and turns, you got a date with Lucy, and trust me she is someone worth hanging out with this summer.