Overwhleming and over the top action thriller that forgets to be any fun

Rating: 4/10 (23 January 2015)

STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning
Lucy (Scarlett Johansson) has to deliver a briefcase to Mr. Jang (Min-sik Choi) a Chinese gangster, but finds herself double crossed by her partner and becomes an unwitting host for a new synthetic drug that allows humans to use 100% of their brain, along with a group of other subjects. But she fights back, and with the help of hotshot cop Del Toro (Amr Waked) seeks to track down the benevolent Professor Norman (Morgan Freeman), who's spearheading some pioneering research in to the field of mind drugs.
In a sea of mindless, wham-bam thank ya mam action flicks, French auteur Luc Besson has, with Lucy, tried to craft that rarest of breeds, a thinking man's action film that gets you to summon a bit of the grey matter in the midst of all the noise and explosions, even if he's admitted taking some creative license with a bit of the scientific truth behind it. The idea of experimental new drugs being used to enhance the mind's ability is a ripe idea for such a film. But, crucially before this, you need to care about the characters involved, and you need to make the film a bit of fun, two things Lucy completely fails to do.
We find ourselves just thrust in to the action, without any sort of introduction or character development, and so it's impossible to care about this character or any of the problems that face her, as she single-handedly wipes out gangs of villainous mobsters with an unexplained sense of efficiency. The film is so swept up in the grandeur of it's clever idea that it just becomes overwhelmingly cerebral and far fetched, without a hint of humour or more easy going stuff.
Yes, it gives you something to think about, but without solid writing or a lead character to root for, you just can't think about it as much as you could. At least it's blissfully short. **