Luc Besson's comic-book movie

Rating: 7/10 (1 August 2014)

I think Luc Besson really wanted to make a comic book movie, but since he is now his own sort of "brand" of movie-maker, he probably couldn't get a hold of, say, the X-Men or DC or even Star Wars, and why should be anyway. Because with Lucy he decided to just make ALL the comic book movies in one, with one character. This rating means not that it's really an entirely "good" serious action movie or a serious look at how human beings are part of this great long thing called consciousness and have evolved for years and years. I'ts more like a colossal, memorable guilty pleasure.
Lucy is a fairly crazy look at super powers, and how a humans brain, once going last the ho-hum 10% functionality and by tens of percents, once tapped, we can, oh I don't know, have "Force"-like powers to push people away with the swipe of a hand, see through walls and people, learn things with instantaneous ability, and control people's actions. Oh, and once nearing the 100% mark, a super computer with the ability to time travel and look back into the beginnings of the universe. Besson has some balls, but I think what keeps this from being totally pretentious garbage, for me, is that it's not taking itself entirely seriously.
...or, if it is, Besson doesn't pretend he's not making a genre movie, and complete with nasty Asian gangsters (led by Choi Min Sik of Old boy, a welcome presence and he plays every scene to the subtle-over-the-top hilt), and race-against-the-clock suspense. There isn't quite so much action as I expected, or at least from the maestro behind LA femme Nikita or Taken. Or perhaps I could just see that Besson was committing so much to the premise and exploring the bullshit science that I couldn't help but chuckle as Scar-Jo contorts on the ceiling as her body is racked by the mystery drug that, after seeping into her blood following being turned by the Asian gangsters as a drug mule, gives her the initial powers.
We see what happens inside of her body as she is given this new drug, and then later when she needs more of the drug how, say, her face starts to melt and she falls apart like some wax figure. The special effects and science here is matched just right for pure wild fantasy. And most of all its good how much the Hero commits to her character, especially early on when she is just a frightened woman put into a terrible situation (when she sees someone shot, at first, it really shakes her up), and then at first when she is finding this power that turns her, in slightest terms, like the Terminator.
If there is a problem its that she is so monotone through portions of it that, despite (or because) of the demands of the script, she has less to play with except for her dead-straight voice. Better is near the end where it just gets So wild that she is becoming the Matrix or something. So, in other words, Lucy is kinda stupid and doesn't make sense If you try to think about with full sincerity.
But if you look at it as just pure unadulterated fantasy, And a quick one at that at 87 minutes, you'll get something... different from it, that's for Damn sure. It's like if five of Grant Morrison's most eccentric comics were put in a blender and splat onto celluloid (plus an expository Morgan Freeman).