In Extremis.

Rating: 4/10 (14 August 2015)

You can have too much of a good thing, assuming that intelligence is good, which some people seem to find arguable.
I don't see much reason to go on at length about this computer-generated extravaganza. It begins in an ordinary way, as a decent B-rated thriller about drug smuggling from Taiwan through the rest of the civilized world. Unsuspecting carriers are kidnapped, knocked out, and a pouch of an extremely powerful drug is sewn into the linings of their bellies. What the drug is being smuggled for is an unanswered question. Evidently it doesn't get you high, so it's difficult to imagine a street market for it.
Scarlett Johansson is one of those kidnapped by a band of Taiwanese evildoers who kill everyone who gets in their way or shows any hesitation before they cooperate., Johansson's pouch bursts within her and she absorbs this miraculous substance that boosts her cognitive capacity into the red zone. Thereafter, the quite respectable drug-smuggling tale turns into a bloody explosion of special effects that nobody -- not even some egghead who is utilizing 120% of his brain's capacity -- could grasp.
The climactic scene takes us on a scenic tour resembling the Star Gate episode in "2001: A Space Odyssey" -- and if you thought THAT was a little hard to understand, wait until you see this.
It all fails. I guess Luc Bresson, the director, wanted to somehow combine a crime thriller with science fiction but it's like getting a cobra and a mongoose to fall in love. He tries desperately and winds up with Wonder Woman.
Not the fault of the actors, all of whom do the best they can with the material, including the biological and philosophical mumbo jumbo. "We are dependent on time. If time stops, we stop." (No kidding?) Scarlett Johansson is no longer a teen ager but a fully blown woman of whom more should have been made, so to speak. But what a role she's trapped in! The drug turns her into a kind of robot. She never smiles, rarely blinks, strides purposefully about, and clicks her head from side to side like a mechanical man in a circus. Morgan Freeman as the only scientist who can begin to understand what is happening to her comes off best. He's like a reassuring wild old uncle.
No one could begin to fill in the plot's loopholes. She can feel the roots of a tree. (How do you do that?) She feels gravity. (Okay.) She feels every cell in her body, which might be a lot of fun if she had any human desires.
But although she is able to shut down her nociceptors -- she can pluck a bullet out of her shoulder without wincing -- she's lost her sense of humor. That doesn't keep the writers from sticking in a wisecrack suitable for an Arnold Schwarzenegger action movie. She tortures some information out of a guy and leaves him with two jagged knives stuck through his hands, with the exit line: "Thank you for sharing." Some of her other lines ("I am everywhere"), well, I think I first heard it from Tom Joad in "The Grapes of Wrath", and he stole it from Ralph Waldo Emerson.
There's blood all over the place and explosions and car chases at supersonic speed and everyone's face is splashed with the gore of victims. When there's no overt gunplay we can watch a cheetah catch and kill a gazelle. Meanwhile there are galaxies of whirling colors and bobbing jelly-like phantoms constellating. The kids will love it.