Lucy (2014) Review

Time: 89 Minutes
Age Rating: Violence
Cast:
Scarlett Johansson as Lucy
Morgan Freeman as Professor Samuel Norton
Amr Waked as Pierre Del Rio
Choi Min-sik as Mr Jang
Director: Luc Besson

Lucy (Scarlett Johansson) delivered a mysterious briefcase to Mr. Jang (Min-Sik Choi) but is immediately captured and turned into a drug mule for a new powerful synthetic drug. When the bag she is carrying inside her leaks, Lucy’s body undergoes unimaginable changes that unlocks her mind’s full potential 100%. With her new-found powers, Lucy turns into a merciless warrior intent on getting back at her captors, along with receiving help from Professor Norman (Morgan Freeman), the leading authority on the human mind, and French police captain Pierre Del Rio (Amr Waked).

Luc Besson is in my opinion a great action director, so based on his involvement, the plot, and actors, Lucy has a lot of potential for a great movie. Lucy overall is an enjoyable action movie, with greatly directed action scenes with some flaws that hold it back in being great. It’s not one of his best films and it has some problems but it is still very entertaining.

The plot is very similar to Limitless (2011), it involves a drug that allows someone to access 100% of their brain. The difference between these two movies is that Limitless plays the concept as realistic as possible, while Lucy goes all out, no matter how insane it gets. That’s one thing I’ll give credit, it knows what it is and doesn’t try to play it too realistically. The first part of the movie wasn’t very interesting, Scarlett Johansson was the best part in those moments. Also in the first scene has some footage of animals cut in, I get that it is supposed to show the parallel with what is going on but it doesn’t do that throughout the rest of the movie. Once she has the drugs however, that’s when the movie really starts becoming entertaining. There are some odd ideas such as Lucy eventually being able to use telepathy and telekinesis. Despite this, all these scenes are done well and are entertaining. There’s just one problem, once she gets to that level, there really aren’t many threats to her. She can basically do anything now. It’s not like she’s against people who use the drugs, which is in my opinion what they should’ve done. The runtime is set right, at around 90 minutes, it doesn’t overstay its welcome.

Scarlett Johansson is really good here, especially in showing the difference before taking the drug and after. She’s also really good in the action scenes and pulls them off convincingly. Morgan Freeman doesn’t play that much of a part in the movie but he does well with what he’s got. Min-Sik Choi was good as the villain, even though we didn’t really learn about him. However like I said before, once Lucy has great powers, there isn’t much of a threat to her, not even him. So as intimidating as he is the first time we see him, once Lucy is on God-Mode, he’s just not that scary.

One thing the film definitely gets right is that it looks good and the action scenes were filmed well without any shaky cam to ruin them, like a lot of movies use nowadays. I also like what they did with the special effects, especially when Lucy could do some of the abilities. Despite her being overpowered, it was fun to watch her use her newfound powers with ease.

Lucy isn’t a great movie but it was a decent one that was quite entertaining. If you like action movies and you don’t mind some missteps along the way, you will enjoy Lucy. The acting was decent, the special effects were great and it was overall entertaining, It’s just overpowering the main character and certain other decisions which brought it down a bit. Despite this, Lucy was really entertaining and I still say it is worth checking out.

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