Lucy

I wish I was smart enough to get Hollywood to pay for my wet dreams the way that Luc Besson does. He couldn’t legally roll around town with a beautiful yet underage Natalie Portman, so he made a movie where his surrogate Jean Reno gets to take care of her, shoots guns with her, and to top it off plays a weird game of dress up with her as well. And when he got to the point that underage beauties no longer did it for him, he moved on to his gay side and decided to make a movie called The Transporter. Yeah, more like transport him and a small Asian girl to Jason Statham’s bed! In Transporter he makes Statham take off his shirt and get all oiled up in at least two extended scenes where he has to fight a gang of dudes for his freedom! Speaking of, why does Matt Schuelze look exactly like Thor? Anyway, once he was over that, he decided to move over to the dark meat and made Columbiana with Zoe Saldana! He’s French, so this explains his wide range of tastes! He's like the fat French Christian Grey.

But seriously, why can’t I possess this power??? Not that I want gay oily men or underage girls in my bed, but if I had just seen a naked Scarlett Johansson in Under the Skin, I too would’ve signed her up to make a movie where she has mind control over me like Deebo! She could take off my clothes from the other room while she’s baking me dessert! It’s perfect! But no, I’m the scrub that has to sit here and complain in a review that no one will ever read!

I have to admit that when I first walked out of Lucy, I didn’t like it! I was expecting more of the same from Besson; cheesy yet artful fight sequences; random models that can accurately fire automatic weapons, and a plot that’s thinner than Woody Harrelson’s hairline. That toupee in True Detective was money by the way. But what I got instead was philosophical Besson. Now don’t get me wrong, he still has a few of the action scenes you are accustomed to seeing; one of which involves well dressed men pulling out Uzis to the sound of classical music during a gun fight that takes place at a university. And yes, Scarlett Johansson does have a scene where she becomes aware and takes out a room full of Thai gangsters in a matter of seconds but sadly there’s not enough of that.

So Lucy (Johansson) gets herself into trouble by meeting this douchebag at a club in South Korea who tricks her into delivering a case to the mysterious Mr. Jang. She soon learns that Jang plans on using her and a few others as mules to deliver this new synthetic drug for him to other countries. The drugs are sewn into their stomachs and during Lucy’s delivery, one of the goons roughs her up a bit, and this causes half of the drugs to be released into her system. The amount that is released into her body causes this strange reaction within her that now allows her to access more of her brain power. Now typically most humans only utilize 10% of their brain; but Lucy automatically jumps up to 20% and this unlocks certain feelings, knowledge, and power that she didn’t know was even possible. All of her senses are heightened and she can all of a sudden learn and interpret other languages, control every aspect of her body, and also manipulate the environment around her. And  now that the these drugs are a part of her, she realizes that she doesn’t have that long to live, so she sets off to track down the rest of the drugs that were sent out and to also take down the gangsters that did this to her.

On the surface this sounds like typical Besson but as Lucy gains access to more of her brain, her agenda begins to change. As she’s on her mission, she links up with Morgan Freeman, a world renowned scholar whose work focuses mainly on the brain and it’s capabilities. He convinces her to share the knowledge that she is gaining which includes her increased ability to manipulate others, technology, and even time. And this is where you begin to realize that this isn’t your typical shoot em up for the heck of it movie. They spend just as much time focusing on why organisms exist as they do on the car chase scenes that take place in

France! By the way, one chase scene is a direct rip from the Bourne Identity; so much so that they even use the same song that was played in that movie; they just gave it a dub step remix.

Anyway, after marinating for a bit, I’ve convinced myself that I actually liked this movie. You just have to know what you signed up for going into it. Also, ScarJo is so stunningly beautiful that it’s hard to concentrate on what’s happening in the movie for the first 20 minutes or so. But once she goes from being the average human to the transcendent being that we all can potentially become; you can actually focus on the plot and the action because her character basically turns into the alien from Under the Skin. Sadly, she doesn’t get naked here like she did in that movie.

I rate this movie as FRESH and suggest that you pop in.