Worst movie ever.

Rating: 1/10 (15 August 2015)

I have no idea why such amazing talents as Scarlett Johansson and Morgan Freeman said "Yes" to Luc Besson's 'Lucy'. Maybe it's because it was shot in Taiwan and France, and the actors got to travel and see the sights, but it definitely couldn't be because of the script or filming. There was a time when I loved Director/Writer/Producer Luc Besson. He gave us 'Leon: The Professional', 'The Fifth Element', and 'La Femme Nikita'. He makes most of his living by writing shoddy action movie screenplays and producing, such as the 'Taken' franchise, 'The Transporter' movies, and many other action films that you don't remember anymore.
I would just like to know what happened to this once great filmmaker who gave us such great characters as Leon and Mathilda or Corbin Dallas, Leeloo, Ruby Rhod, and the impressive Jean-Baptiste Emanuel Zorg. Besson's newest film 'Lucy' has a decent set up, but fails to tell us what the characters or film itself is trying to tell us. At one point, it wants to be a superhero movie, then at other times it wants to be a cat and mouse gangster film, then it wants to jump into a Terrence Malick 'Tree of Life' scenario complete with dinosaurs, time travel, and the Old West.
For some reason, Besson wanted to keep 'Lucy' right at 89 minutes, but decided to pack enough characters and story to last 2.5 hours. Needless to say, you won't feel anything for any character, no matter what their demise. If you've seen the trailer or even the tag line for the poster, then you already have a sense of what the film is about. Johansson plays an American girl named Lucy, living with a friend in Taiwan, who spends her days going to class and her nights partying with all the wrong people. She meets up with a guy who she dated for one week, who asks her to deliver a briefcase to a guy she doesn't know. This guy turns out to be some sort of drug lord yakuza named Mr. Jang (Min-sik Choi), who now has Lucy and three other people in his custody.
They are all told they will be drug mules for a new type of drug that is guaranteed to make kids go wild, and all four captives are cut open to put the drugs in their lower stomach for transport across the globe. Lucy is beaten by one of Mr. Jang's goons for not putting out and one of the bags of drugs in her body starts to leak out into her blood stream. Due to a chemical in the drug that creates life for pregnant women, Lucy is able to use more than just 10% of her brain, which brings us to the overall story arc of the film. If you can use more than 10% of your brain, or hell, if you can use 100% of your brain, what would you be capable of? That is what Professor Norman (Morgan Freeman), tries to answer for us, as his scenes are spliced into some of the action beats as he is giving a lecture to students and colleagues on what a human being is capable of if they start using more than just the average 10% of brain power we are given.
Well it seems that Besson thinks that it turns you into Superman, Magneto, Professor Xavier, Mystique, and Wolverine all at once, as Lucy now has telekinetic powers, X-ray vision, the ability to control people and objects, the ability to change her physical appearance in one second, and the ability to heal faster. The theories here are so insane that they are laughable, as in one scene, we see Lucy looking at people in a populated area on their mobile phones, able to see their cell signals shoot in the air. And just like a touch screen computer, she can move her hands and move the signals to find something she is looking for, which is Mr. Jang and his posse who are after Lucy. But after the first action scene with Lucy literally moving her hand from her left to the right, which takes out a dozen armed gang members, we never again feel like she is in any real danger. And it's completely ludicrous that in the final climactic fight scene, that she doesn't help any of the real police officers in the stand off with the yakuza, when all she has to do is move her hand. But hey, she is now time traveling and turning into a computer, literally.
Besson thinks that is we use more than 10% of our brain, we become less human, as Lucy turns into basically a 'Terminator' void of any emotion. Man, what a waste of a good set up and talent. Johansson is good with what she's given, but the script doesn't give her much to work with, besides one scene when she is on the phone with her mother, telling her that she can feel everything and that she is going to die. And Freeman is there to play the same role as he always plays, which is the older man with wisdom. 'Lucy' is a superhero movie without any fighting in it, besides some gun-play. It definitely wants to be something more in that Lucy might have the answers now to why we are all here, but instead of investigating that topic, it would rather spend more time on a band of gang members coming after Lucy, only to be immediately killed off with a wave of the hand. Do yourself a favor this weekend, and SKIP this movie.