Insulting and messy

Rating: 4/10 (7 December 2015)

'Lucy' has a lot of flaws, but one of its biggest ones is the same reason they find it so hard to make a good Superman movie. Someone being all powerful is boring. When all someone has to do is use their mind to drop all the bullets out of a gun or throw someone aside there is absolutely no interest to be had in any action sequence the film throws our way. The movie tries to be a lot more than what it really is. It tries to be thought-provoking and intelligent but just comes across as a mess of ideas, with the audience insultingly trying to be convinced this is all possible.
I'm not sure exactly how we are supposed to feel about the character of 'Lucy'. To me she's nothing short of pure evil. She will kill a completely innocent person without giving it a second thought and then in the next scene spare the life of a vicious drug-dealing mob leader who will consequently go on to take dozens more lives. She's portrayed as being the heroine we should root for but when you actually give it some thought she's no better than any of the villains. I had this same complaint about writer/director Luc Besson's other film 'Taken 3' as well. It seems to be a real flaw in his writing of late that he needs to fix. Overall it's a messy film that even Morgan Freeman and Scarlett Johansson's star power isn't enough to save. There's an idea here that could have worked but it needed to be done in very different fashion.