From limitless to transcendence, in so short ride

Rating: 6/10 (29 July 2014)

The movie focus on Lucy, a simple girl tricked by a friend into being a drug trafficker forcefully by storing a big bag of experimental drug in her abdominal cavity through surgical process. On the drop point, Lucy refuses to be molested by her captors thus one of them kicks violently, particularly to her stomach. The bag in her break open and the drug is then absorbed. It runs out that it's a special drug that increases the usage of brain capacity of the normal 10%. Waking up, Lucy easily frees herself and gets revenge to the drug trafficker boss without killing him. As her brain usage increases steadily, she then devise another purpose of contacting a Professor Noraan about what she's been through, and at the same time getting her hands on the other three packets of drug en route to Europe. She does both of that at the same time, raising awe of Professor Norman and his colleagues. But at the same time, the drug boss has not given in and the drug mob assaults the university where Lucy meets the professors. While the police accompanying Lucy have a shoot out with the mob, Lucy steadily nears 100% of her brain usage. The drug boss slips his way to the room where Lucy and the professors are. He shoots her in the head but it turns out that Lucy has already 'dispersed'. The detective arrived and killed the drug boss, but as he wondered where Lucy is, his phone rings with a message replying to his question.
The story is somewhat epic if we look at the scope that it encompasses. In short and implicitly, it kind of suggests that alternative explanation on the biblical account of humans are created in God's image. It kind of suggest that as we are in God's image, we have what God really has, that is as we have brains ourselves, so do God. Yet unlike God, we don't use our brains to the full capacity. SO if with just 10% brain usage humans can create huge civilizations like what we have now, the thing we can achieve at 100% usage is explained by Prof. Norman: "I have no idea".
The thing is, this movie puts such heavy concepts in a such relatively short duration of a movie. Thus it makes the flow kind of overly hasty and feels rather rushed. Moreover the initial flow buildup and main character introduction took too long. The transition from the drug induced brain optimization, much like the concept in Limitless (2011), to a concept of controlling pretty much everything, much like the one in Transcendence (2014), feels rather too drastic for such a short duration. Thus the transition will feel weird and stupid for some people. That will in turn downplay the sci-fi appeal of this movie.
The action is quite nice. And by having Scarlett Johansson, the level of action is apparently no surprise to her. It's nice to see an international cast of seasoned actors. Here Morgan Freeman has his third back to back sci-fi movie role. Choi Min Sik doesn't lose his edge f calm and sudden bursts. And Amr Waked looks great as a European after all those Middle Eastern roles.
My verdict for Lucy (2014) is, although it offers an interesting concept and entertaining action, is that the movie will get only a 6 out of 10 score. It's because of the rushed pace and short duration of a big concept.