Director: Luc Besson
Genre: Sci-fi, action
Running time: 89 minutes
Now showing at Cinema Magic, Naalya
Drug trafficking meets time travel and super computers. Well, there’s a combination you never hear about. And that’s where movies like Lucy come in, stretching our imaginations to limitless bounds.
While living in Taiwan, Lucy’s (Johansson) boyfriend gets her to take a briefcase to his druglord boss, Mr Jang (Min-sik). While she’s delivering it, she is kidnapped and a bag of an experimental narcotic drug is out in her stomach. Her life as an unwilling drug mule is cut short when one of the men holding her hostage kicks her, causing the bag to break open in her body. You would think this would cause her to convulse and die or get one nasty stomach ache, wouldn’t you?
If you have watched movies like Leon: The Professional and Taken 2, you would know that that’s too old school for director Luc Besson. Besson has been referred to as the John Hughes of action movies because he takes his movies to unpredictable places. In Lucy’s case, the drug instead of making her sick, makes her brain activity reach almost 100 per cent, instead of the 10 per cent the average person’s brain works at.
Her new capabilities include, mental time travel, telekinesis, willing herself not to feel pain, sick combat skills, and loads of other really cool, ninja-style abilities. She uses these skills to fight Mr Jang and his gang and get the drug off the market. But just so, there is a bit of believability in the movie, Lucy’s abilities have side effects, so she enlists the help of Professor Norman (Freeman) and a cop to fight these side effects and put a stop to Mr Jang.
Science fiction movies are rarely popular, especially if they are not part of a franchise with a cult following, yet Lucy has been well received. While some critics have credited this to Johansson and Freeman, it seems to be the movie’s ability to make what sounds like a complex storyline really entertaining.