What with Marvel Films dragging its feet where making a Black Widow feature is concerned, French filmmaker Luc Besson has taken
matters into his own hands and given us Lucy, a star vehicle whose sole
purpose is to let Scarlett Johansson shine.
To that end, the movie succeeds handsomely as the actress gets to kick
butt as well as create a distinctive character that actually evolves before our
very eyes. However, there are unexpected
delights in the film, especially during its third act as Besson dips his toe
into the subject of speculative science fiction and succeeds in exploring the
possibilities of unbridled mental power far better than the similarly themed
Johnny Depp feature Transcendence did. It also manages to touch on the notion
of alienation that Johansson embodied so effectively in her previous feature Under the Skin, creating a sense of thematic cohesion that’s intriguing.
As with most of Besson’s films, a high concept is at play
where logic is expediently brushed aside.
Lucy (Johansson) is an aimless party girl in Tai Pei who’s none too
bright and has horrible taste in men.
Her latest loser, Richard (Pilou Asbaek) happens to be a bagman for drug
cartel who tricks our heroine into delivering a briefcase to the mysterious Mr.
Jang (Min-sik Choi). Call it bad luck,
call it fate but this ends up being a life-altering event for Lucy as, after
making the delivery, she’s knocked out, cut open and has a bag of an
experimental drug inserted just below her abdomen. She and three others have been turned into
reluctant drug mules and given passports and planes tickets so that can each land
in separate European nations where they’ll be met by Jang’s associates. However, something goes horribly wrong as
Lucy is assaulted, the bag is ruptured and she begins to change in ways she
can’t begin to understand as the drug is ingested in her body.
Give Besson credit – he knows how to quickly set up his
premise and get down to business as all of this occurs within the film’s first
twenty minutes. The rest of the movie is devoted to watching Lucy change and
develop new abilities as she’s been put on the evolutionary fast track. Whereas
a normal human uses 10% of their brain capacity to function, when Lucy is able
to use 20% she becomes a crack shot, is impervious to pain, has total memory
recall and has super-hearing. At 30%,
she’s able to control the movements of others and read minds. At 40%, she…you get the idea. Besson keeps us
constantly updated as to how quickly Lucy’s mind is opening up and each time
she hits a new level, we’re never sure what she’ll be capable of. This structure proves to be great fun as each
time she gets smarter, our curiosity is peaked, making for a constantly
shifting and engaging story.
Does any of this have a basis in reality? Not being a neurosurgeon, I can’t be sure but
I’d be willing to bet that even if your brain’s ability was constantly growing,
I don’t think you’d be able access other people’s memories with a single touch
or be able to manipulate magnetic and electrical waves so you could transmit
your voice and image through computers and phones instantly. This is all beside the point as Besson’s
purpose is to entertain but also pose “What if” questions that seem improbable now
but in the future could become commonplace.
Had you told Thomas Jefferson that one day we’d be able to fly thousands
of miles in big metal tubes with wings and be able to communicate using
invisible waves that travel through the air, I have a feeling he’d have been a
bit of a skeptic.
Of course, speculation such as this is the bread-and-butter
of good science fiction and it reaches its zenith when Besson posits that Lucy’s
abilities would ultimately make her God-like.
Whether what she’s capable of is possible or not is immaterial; pushing
the story to the point where it makes us think about what it is to be human,
why and how life exists and what connection we might have to our primitive
selves is the point, leaving us with grand questions to ponder, akin to those
posed in 2001: A Space Odyssey and Altered States.
Johansson does a remarkable job grounding the
film early on, particularly in a scene in which Lucy, after accessing her
oldest memories calls her mother to thank her for all she’s done for her. It’s a wonderfully poignant moment that helps
us stay emotionally invested in the character long after she’s less than
human. As you would expect, she’s ably
supported by Morgan Freeman as the leading authority on the human brain, who
she consults as she senses her consciousness change. These two are the anchors for Besson’s flight
of fancy, as Lucy ends up being one of the more pleasant surprises in this
bleak summer, proving to be far more substantial than you’d expect.
This article appears in Jul 24-30, 2014.
