Taipei. Lucy, an American student, is coerced by her boyfriend Richard into bringing a package to mafia boss Mr. Jang, by handcuffing her to the suitcase. The suitcase contains a mysterious drug, CPH4. Mr. Jang's men kill Richard and surgically insert a bag of the drug into Lucy's intestine, as well as three other people, intending to smuggle them into Europe. After Lucy is kicked in the stomach, the drug spills into her body, causing her to start using more and more unused potentials of her brain, giving her telekinesis and super-intellect. Lucy escapes to Paris and contacts Professor Norman and police officer Pierre. By obtaining all the four bags with the drug, Lucy intravenously absorbs it, creating a supercomputer. She gains a 100% use of the brain, gains the ability to travel through time, and then disappears from her chair.
If the viewers do not take the story seriously, and just regard it as a 'tongue-in-cheek', silly superhero comic-book, then "Lucy" is a fun little fantasy action flick. Except that in the end the movie conversely indeed starts to take itself seriously, but did not establish any philosophical foundations that leads up to it or backs it up. Assembled as a feminist superhero film, "Lucy" enjoys in its audacious showing off of a heroine who gets superpowers to gain revenge (and self-confidence as well) against the villains who harmed her, and it gets a lot of support from a "cute-tough" performance by Scarlett Johansson, whereas director Luc Besson inserts some of his trademark outbursts of style: the scene where a shot body slides on the floor until it gets stopped by Lucy's heel who enters the building is equally as memorable as the one where she just "swipes" right with her hand and her telekinesis just blows off a gangster to the right like a toy. However, even leaving the scientific side aside, "Lucy" is illogical at times: would a super-intelligent woman really enter a hospital with a gun in her hand, in front of everyone and in front of surveillance cameras? Wouldn't an intelligent person at least try to hide her gun and put a mask on her head, so that she won't be recognized and chased by the police afterwards? Some of the scenes are also too cheesy. One in particular has Lucy showing up on the TV screen of Professor Norman (Morgan Freeman), and then Lucy goes on bragging about her super-powers and superiority, about how she controls all the cells, that you don't know if it is more cringeworthy when it was written in the script or when Johansson is forced to say these lines aloud. The film creates an ending which it does not understand itself, though it is a motive of numerous other works in which life does not know what to do with all the Universe, yet up until it, "Lucy" works as a fast roller coaster that keeps the viewers engaged.
Grade:++
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