Lucy (film review)

Lucy is much more than Scarlett Johansson defeating foes and overcoming obstacles in a sexy and cool way, although she does this very well and is a significant proportion of the film's success and enjoyment. Luc Besson writes and directs a film along the lines of Limitless but of course gives it his own rather far fetched twist; a drug is developed that allows human beings to access more of their brains capacity, currently assumed by the medical profession to be about only 10%. Scarlett Johansson's character Lucy accidentally absorbs a large quantity of this drug and as her brain capacity soon rapidly increases, so does her ability to retain and process information at a staggering rate and even control and manipulate certain external objects. The second part of that sentence, about controlling external objects, is indeed very far fetched and probably subject to scientific ridicule. But Besson has such fun with the themes and visuals that he almost gets away with it. I say almost, as the last twenty minutes of the film is way over the top and doesn't really make any sense. Morgan Freeman's character is very interesting. He plays a professor and scientist who is an expert in the human brain, and is soon contacted by Lucy with the hope of not only making sense of what she is experiencing but also to save her life. I obviously won't tell you what happens at the end but the underlying philosophy is a largely secular one; that we are merely a highly sophisticated collection of cells and that our main purpose in life is to pass on our genetics and knowledge to the next generation of human beings. That aside, it is a thought provoking and largely enjoyable film with an excellent performance by Johansson. 7/10