Relentless Impossibilities

Rating: 8/10 (11 August 2014)

This apparently isn't the first movie that takes the myth of human beings' 20% limit access to their brains, the obvious comparison to this is 2011's Limitless, but that one uses the concept for only gaining all knowledge from memories and dealing with drug side effects. This movie takes beyond the advantages, it gives a theory that reaching to100% percent might also turn people into some sort of a superhero. Through it all, it's just too ridiculous to take seriously. Fortunately, that is not what the film wants, it just examines every single detail of this absurd idea without hindering anymore subplot. Lucy is just an intense rapid fire set of unrelenting imaginations, while it's pretty dumb, it's still a pretty amazing thing to experience.
The plot is plain simple; it goes from a task gone wrong to a basic revenge thriller. The film has two palpable things to describe: one is the chase sequences that feels like playing Grand Theft Auto, knowing all the cheat codes, and then type them away to get an easy escape. The other is the exposition of the idea that appears to be a wannabe The Tree of Life. This combination of chaotic action and dumb science does come in handy, but it doesn't bother building anything larger to the themes of the story other than explaining the brain and human existence. Even though it's quite preposterous, the film does have a sense of fun. It takes no limits and let Lucy's abilities flow, even if it controls space and time. These sequences are just too priceless: the grandness, speed, and wondrous visuals that display on screen will keep giving you the endless frenzy you'll get in recent memory.
Director Luc Besson is never afraid of showing off these things, no matter how stupid it all sounds and looks. No storyteller could express such ideas like Besson. The action scenes are pure mayhem, from bloody violence to cars crashing like it's not a big deal for the heroes. As the plot goes, it gets dumber and dumber, but that is, in the end, the point of the film. Any argument against it is invalid, stray whatever it has in mind until its package of imaginations explode. The acting doesn't need more than it already has: Scarlett Johannson just do what she has to do. There's human emotion then apathetic superhuman emotion, it's all wondrously effective.
Lucy doesn't really need to prove anything smart, another comparison is this year's Transcendence although both may have different concepts, how they push their limits are somehow the same, except Lucy embraces its silliness, therefore that is its own charm, a sci-fi that recreates science only to let the spectacles get out of hand. Because we don't usually see this much insanity in our gritty blockbuster cinema. Sometimes we do need such enthusiastic guilty pleasure that could blow our minds in a different way.