"Lucy" passes the entertainment test but Besson is mired in the unsatisfying adolescent world of sadistic one-note mobsters and the vigilante's thirst for revenge

Rating: 6/10 (4 September 2015)

"Lucy" is famed action sci-fi director Luc Besson's latest import from France. The film is mainly in English and stars Scarlett Johansson who plays a student in Taipei, Taiwan, forced by an ex- boyfriend to deliver a mysterious suitcase to a Korean mob boss, Mr. Jang. It turns out that the suitcase contains packets of a new experimental drug called CPH4 which can enhance physical and mental capabilities. Jang has his henchmen sew packets of the drug into her stomach and while in captivity, one of the captors kicks her in the stomach breaking the packet and releasing all of the drug into her system. Lucy suddenly gains superhuman abilities including extraordinary depth of perception.
Early on it's clear that Besson has trouble deciding whether "Lucy" is a good "Terminator" or a bad "Terminator." After escaping by killing her captors, there's a rather ugly scene whether Lucy rushes to the hospital to have the remaining bag of CPH4 removed from her stomach. She kills a man on the operating table and rationalizes her actions to the doctors by indicating that the man would have died anyway (she scans the x-rays and concludes he is a terminal case.) Soon, however, Besson gets back on track by having Lucy strictly kill bad boys and clearly go down the "good Terminator" route.
Realizing that she will disintegrate without getting her hands on some more CPH4, using her super brain, she locates the three other drug mules and phones in their locations to handsome Parisian cop, Pierre Del Rio. Meanwhile, she contacts kindly super-brilliant Professor Norman (Morgan Freeman) who has been lecturing on increased mental capacity for years. Lucy's ever increasing knowledge will go to waste if she doesn't get it to Professor Norman before she expires.
The rest of "Lucy" is a combination of a dopey Asian mobster flick with some rather nice sci-fi visuals mainly involving time travel and psychedelic-like perceptions. As Lucy keeps developing her "full potential," she also must fend off the mobsters who are trying to kill her. With her extraordinary powers, the mobsters are of course no match for her and she dispenses with them in a series of clichéd scenes including a car chase, assisted by the handsome Parisian cop.
In perhaps the neatest scene, she goes back in time to earth's creation by flipping her hand as if she going through pages on an iPad. My favorite time travel moment is when she finds herself on a street in the late 19th century.
The ending is rather anti-climactic. Before Lucy becomes one with the universe, she hands over her knowledge to Professor Norman on a flash drive (of all things!). Del Rio asks where Lucy is and a message on his cell phone shows up, "I am everywhere!" So presumably now Professor Norman will be able to cure all diseases with all the knowledge he finds on the flash drive.
Besson's creation of a superhero relies on the accidental consumption of an untested black market drug. Why would someone try to sell such an extraordinary compound on the black market when they could (perhaps with some tinkering) use it themselves and gain super-intelligence like Lucy? I know we're supposed to suspend our disbelief, but it still feels a little too "easy" for this CPH4 drug to induce such effects in a human being.
"Lucy" manages to be entertaining as well as tawdry as the same time. It passes the entertainment test but one gets the feeling that Besson is mired in the unsatisfying adolescent world of sadistic one-note mobsters and the vigilante's thirst for revenge.