Enjoyable, Worthwhile, and a dash of real science thrown in with sci fi

Rating: 7/10 (24 November 2014)

I enjoyed this movie. I took psychophysiology in graduate school and the movie helped point to the higher potentials of the brain, even on a quantum level. It is grounded in some science and then leaps into some far out speculations on what the science could mean, but then that is what sci fi does best.
I did have some reservations about the movie. One is that editing from scene to scene is a bit choppy. It juxtaposes between a professor lecturing at a college and a beautiful female shooting drug cartel goons with a single shoot each coming from her emerging super intelligent brain. Then there are flashes of the percentages of her brain that is being used that come up at every step of the movie. This kind of editing reminds you that you are watching a movie and makes it a little harder to track the narrative flow. The plot presented is pretty basic super hero in one sense, with the bad guys getting it in the end.
But behind the choppy editing and the superhero plot line are some interesting extrapolations of the brain's possible evolution and its potential is harness by the heroine to get out of trouble and further evolve herself. I do think Scarlet Johanssen does a good job acting and making the character both interesting and believable as she goes through the fantastic rapid mutational changes that she does. It made science come a little more alive and relevant to me.
I think that whether or not one enjoys the movie will depend on how the editing works for one, whether one likes sci fi in general, and whether or not the brain evolution speculations feel relevant to oneself. If the science that is thrown in makes the story relevant, then I think a person will like the movie. If it feels like poor scientific extrapolation and an unusually choppy narrative flow, then it will be a kind of C minus superhero movie, and will not compare favorably with the flicks where the storyline and editing run more smoothly and dynamically.
I almost quit the movie because of the choppy editing, but was glad I waded through the first 15 minutes and could finally feel how the drug cartel story was used as a foil to develop the deeper brain themes. It hooked me in then and I enjoyed how it unfolded. It was, still, a little gorier than I like a movie to be, but on the gory index of modern movies it is still less than a lot of them.
All in all. I felt it was worth the watch.