A solid sci-fi action film that fails in its attempt to be something more

Rating: 5/10 (2 October 2014)

Now what you need to know about Lucy, is that it stars Scarlett Johansson (The Avengers, The Prestige) as the title character, and Morgan Freeman pops up as yet another role where he essentially says some things and fills space in the movie. Amr Waked, from the film Syriana also shows up to deliver a good supporting role as Pierre the French cop.
It has a silly story that tries too hard to transcend the 'big dumb action-sci-fi' title, but more on that later. Lucy gets forced into a shady deal with some Koreans while living in Taiwan, and ultimately becomes a pawn in their drug trafficking scheme when her and a few other diverse foreign nationals have what looks like blue crystal meth surgically implanted in them for smuggling purposes. Instead of it being Heisenberg's famous recipe, the drug is actually some synthetic chemical similar to what fetuses get in their sixth month of pregnancy that is apparently extremely potentor something. It's not really important what it chemically is supposed to be. What IS important is that she gets kicked in the stomach and her little blue baby starts to leak and is absorbed into her body.
The blue magic ultimately starts to change her physiology and starts to supercharge her neurons giving her an unprecedented mental faculty. So she periodically begins to unlock new superhuman abilities as her brain fully turns itself on. The premise, as explained in complementary scenes by Professor Norman (Freeman) is that humans by nature only use a very limited fraction of their brain power – something like 10%. His theories are that if a human were to ever unlock more of this processing power, they would be subject to unthinkable (pun definitely intended) abilities that are beyond our human scope of understanding. He is posed the question by one of his students what it would mean to use 100% of your neurons and responds 'I simply don't know'.
Well that's the gimmick for the film. Lucy steadily increases her brain power until it inevitably reaches 100%. Additionally, the blue stuff has a pretty short half-life so if she doesn't keep ingesting it, her cells start to disintegrate. Ultimately she has to team up with Pierre (Waked) to find the other blue stuff before the Koreans get to it, and at the same time she has to unravel what it is she's becoming through the help of Professor Norman. Now I can't fault the movie for its story as it is vaguely original, albeit silly. I found it pretty interesting to think what would happen if mankind started to transcend space and time and suddenly have a completely alien understanding of the universe from what we currently know. It reminded me a lot of reading Dr. Manhattan's personal dialogue in the graphic novel version of The Watchmen.
Where I see this movie primarily failing is that it was trying too much to be a clever film. It's trying too hard to project a meaningful message in a big dumb action movie. Yes, despite the silliness of premise, I will admit I was entertained by the action and visuals (namely Ms. Johansson) , but there was this subtext the movie kept trying to convey about mankind living in ignorance and self- absorption. It was distracting to have stock footage spliced in every few seconds of animals, natural disasters, and mankind's achievements that were obviously supposed to parallel and add some deeper meaning to Lucy's transformation. I'm sure you could find something more profound in the Big Bang Theory intro than in Lucy, as in this film it just comes across as a jumbled mess. When your premise is that a beautiful blonde suddenly develops the ability to interact with all of time and space, you don't cheapen it by trying to some implant some pretentious rigmarole like in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
The Bottom Line: This movie makes a decent attempt and ultimately touches on a lot of interesting and thought provoking topics in science fiction. The visuals are occasionally creative and well delivered – sometimes hokey, but they don't have that cheap feel to them. Unfortunately for Lucy, movies aren't just the net score of their individual components. It looked dumb going in, and it felt dumb after leaving but that's what an action film is. It isn't meant to pontificate the nature of humanity or indulge in some nihilistic view of the universe. Action movies are gun-battles and car chases and beautiful women with mind-powers. If it had just stuck to that definition it might have worked, but unfortunately it tried too hard to be something more.
Read this and other reviews on DriveInZeppelin's website