More fiction than science but at least it wasn't a horror movie

Rating: 7/10 (12 June 2017)

Most films that are promoted as science fiction usually turn out to be some other genre masquerading as sci-fi by adding space ships or futuristic settings. It seems like 90% of the time they turn to be horror movies with the werewolf replaced by an alien or the haunted house replaced by a space ship.
To Lucy's credit, it actually tries to inject a bit of speculative science, but in the end it turns out to be mostly a superhero/revenge/action movie, with flashy special effects.
To buy into this movie, you have to accept Professor Norman (Morgan Freeman)'s lecture early on which reiterates the old story about how humans only use 10% of their brains. His theory is that if we could unlock more, we'd develop "powers" like mind control, similar to how dolphins developed echolocation.
His theory is proved true by Lucy (Scarlett Johansson) who is kidnapped and turned into an unwilling drug mule by Taiwanese gangsters. They surgically implant a bag of their new, experimental drug into her abdomen. Then one of the stupider henchmen kicks her in the stomach, breaking the bag open and giving her a massive overdose. The main side effect (besides apparently briefly reversing the direction of gravity) is that it starts to unlock more and more of her brain.
As the percentage she can use is occasionally flashed on screen she starts developing superpowers like telekinesis, the ability to alter her appearance, the ability to see and control the flow of digital data, and eventually even time travel.
The bad guys pursue Lucy as she attempts to get more of the drug to unlock more and more of her mind, both so she can get revenge and so she can transmit her new-found knowledge to mankind. Meanwhile her abilities get vaster and ever stranger as she turns into some sort of super-intelligent, emotionless robot-person.
If you can buy into the sci-fi part of it, you still have to believe that most of the characters (including Lucy) can just shoot people willy-nilly with little or no repercussions. For example, there's a scene shortly after she escapes from her captors early in the film where she walks into a hospital toting a big gun, walks into an operating room, shoots the patient on the table, pushes him aside and demands that the doctor remove the remaining bag of drugs from her stomach. She even has time for a lengthy phone call with her mom. Then she just walks out of the hospital like nothing had happened. What, the hospital had no security? No one thought to call the police when a bloody, gun-toting woman came strolling in?
But if you can buy all that, the movie is well put together and a visual treat. And I have to admit that I didn't turn it off (I watched it on TV) because I had to see where it was going and how it would end. The ending is actually pretty clever, although it starts to approach 2001 A Space Odyssey level obscurity for a while there.