When I first
saw snippets of the movie, I thought to myself,” I have to watch that”. The
premise of Lucy was very intriguing—About how a chemical actually could alter
one’s brain usage, rendering the person almost invisible. I’ve always been
fascinated on what would happen to a person if he or she could tap into other
parts of the brains that would not have otherwise been used. According to the
movie, if certain percentages of the inactive parts of the brain were to be
unlocked and made active, it would actually unlock unknown talents or
abilities- like you would be able to have x-ray visions, be able to control
other humans and machines.
The
storyline was a downer. It starts off with Lucy being forced by her one-week bf
to pass some unidentified suitcase to a Korean mafia. She is then forcefully
escorted up to one of the rooms in an unnamed hotel. Some drama ensues and soon
she finds herself being forced to be a drug mule, transporting some
blue-coloured drug that is shoved into her lower abdomen, to another mysterious
location where she is being chained-up. To cut story short, the drug leaks in
her abdomen and genetically modifying her brain capabilities. She somehow knows
how to fight and handles a gun. Please treasure this moment, as this is the
only scene that she is fighting in. She will not ever fight in other scenes.
The whole story then shows how she is on this journey of self-discovery as she
rambles on about the existence of human being and time and… all those philosophical
matters, that really puts the y to the awn. The ending of the movie is even
more… self-masturbatory. Luc Besson, I expected something better!
Plus, since
the trailer to the movie have built up this parameter, whereby Lucy is
supposedly this powerful being, I would have expected Lucy, the main character
played by Scarlett Johansson to do something extra ordinary; like produce a
cure for cancer or transforms to a monster that is indestructible or control
the weather like Storm, or shape-shift like Mystique in X-men. But none of that
happened. And the movie talks so much about the plains of time and space—I was
almost led to believe that Lucy could actually teleport and use this
teleportation power to fight the bad guys. Instead she just used the power to
make contact with an ape man. And if you expect lots of fighting and stunts by
Lucy, ala the Black Widow style, you would be so utterly disappointed too. No
such thing. All she did was to suspend the guns in the air and walked over to
the bad guys and suspend them into the air too. In fact, the only thing that
was of resemblance to Black Widow, was the one dimensional portrayal of the
character Lucy. I am beginning to feel that Scarlett Johansson could now only
pull off the character of Black Widow and nothing else. Lucy was like Black Widow
equipped with psychic ability that she did not even know how to use.
Visually,
this sci-fi movie is unlike other sci-fi movies—it lacks a lot of visual
impact. Think of X-men and how Xavier had used his power to stop bullets or how
Jean Grey used her power to thwart a missle—If you had expected any of these,
you would be sorely disappointed. If you
had expected to Lucy using machines to fight against the bad guys, you will be
equally disappointed. In fact, there was barely any violence or gore or special
effects. Nothing.
Okay. I
shall not ramble any longer. In short, I
am very disappointed. Please keep the money that you intended to spend on the
movie. Or if you really need to spend it, I would suggest donating that money
to the ALS foundation.
