Ninety-Nine And A Half (Won't Do)

Rating: 8/10 (3 December 2014)

Scarlet Johansson seems to like these kind of roles: expressionless and powerful – after Under The Clobber and Avengers I think she's cornered the market. Her face, and by now her persona too lend themselves perfectly to the display of vapid heaviness; personally speaking good to look at but not someone with whom you can empathise. But maybe lucky everyone else in this film is personally speaking ordinary looking and/or ugly. As long as she keeps picking fairly interesting scripts this is her golden period.
In this she unwittingly becomes embroiled as a mule with a terrible boss of a machine-like drug gang in Taiwan and has a literally incredible naughty drug sewn inside her to sell on to the endless suckers in Europe. The story is what happens after she's charmingly kicked repeatedly in the stomach by some pointless nutter releasing the secrets of the universe within her so she goes from 10% to 100% total awareness. In other words, a techno-version of Frank Herbert's 1960's tub-thumper Dune and what happened to Paul and Alia updated for tablet screen-swiping generations. And it is a trip. The potential for the story was vast, indeed almost er Limitless, only what a shame it was allowed to dwindle and disappear into a nonsense computerised climax/vortex, or maybe anus would be better – with the full possibilities of Johansson's heightened awareness unrealised. It may be that in her heightened state she took everything for granted, but that's not much consolation to the hordes of thwarted viewers who couldn't take anything for granted, who saw tantalising glimpses of her kicking ass in various outlandish robotic ways and a car chase almost boring in its proportions. Various people are slaughtered peremptorily throughout, mainly baddies but the one I objected to was the poor random guy whose medical operation was interrupted by her shooting him dead explaining glibly to the surgeon that he wouldn't have pulled through anyway. I could never empathise with an executioner even if they could be right. It's a pretty emphatic if trite end proving to me yet again if I needed it that the way forward is in flash drives; I hope but doubt there's a USB connection to a sequel.
I don't love Lucy however I did 100% enjoy it, the time (as being of course the only meaningful measurement) flew by but I did see the film therefore it must exist. The seediness, violence and lack of humour definitely exist along with the artifice, artificiality and artistry within these mere ninety minutes. So the premise is fiction - yawn - what else can be really expected of a fiction film? They Saved Hitler's Brain was also fiction, apologies if that's considered a spoiler. But look around yourself – look at the mess homo sapiens has made for millennia, is making and will continue to make of our only home, and maybe we should think the 10% human brain-usage could be a 90% brainless over-estimate.