Rare...to Medium-rare

Rating: Null/10 (25 August 2014)

By now, this has done OK at the box-office. By now, everyone who went to watch this with 2 things in mind, 1, being the hot Scarlett Johansson being front-left-and-center and 2, being the completely misleading trailer, that perhaps promised Black Widow Pro in this Luc Besson flick, who's also known for having strong female characters all through, in works as diverse as 'Leon', 'The 5th element' and 'Joan D'Arc' (Angel-A as well, but that's for another post), really, really hates this.
My verdict? It definitely ain't all that bad. Sure, quite a bit's lost in translation from the way it all begins, with metaphors telegraphing everything that's happening to the lead character, to the ingenious use of sub-titles signifying the lead's ignorance in the beginning, and having become self-aware towards the eventual denouement.
Still, with this epic scope in mind, Besson, once again, is in a hurry to wrap everything up neatly. He evokes everything from 'The tree of life' to 'Transcendence', even having Freeman pop-up (don;t think that was a coincidence), but falls completely short of making this coherent when one leaves the cinema.
The relationship between the leads is less-than-perfunctory, as is the relationship between the mob-boss-overlord and his minions, and the choice of CPH4 for distribution. I am not a fan of the Michael Bay school of exposition, but this one goes completely the other way, and people willing to give this one a chance and suspend their disbelief were just going, 'huh'? Moi aussi.
He takes enormous advantage of the aspect of this plot where the audience has to suspend their disbelief completely, and stretches it to ridiculous lengths.
Still, as a fellow reviewer put it recently, if this did not have Johansson in the lead, it might've all been for naught.
A lesser effort from Besson, as well as from Johansson. They should've done more, and done better. For what it's worth though, it's 90 minutes of partially-ponderous fun, that's let down by being in-your-face-unsubtle holier-than-thou.