How much enjoyment you derive from Lucy, out in theaters today, largely depends on how badly you think the world was in need of an ersatz 2001 based on specious science. There are those who will react to this film’s hybrid metaphysical thriller state of being poorly, but for those who have appreciated director Luc Besson’s raison d’être (beautiful women meting out justice to hordes of lecherous/villainous men) and cinematic acumen in the past, there is plenty of pleasure within the propulsive narrative he’s created here. Lucy (Scarlett Johansson) finds herself placed directly in the middle of a shady transaction between a Stetson-sporting one night stand and a violent mob boss (Oldboy’s Choi Min-sik, radiating menace without ever speaking a word of English) and forced to act as a drug mule for a new experimental substance about to break into the market. Rough treatment from her captors leads to the package leaking into her bloodstream and slowly activating the 90 percent of her brain that goes unused in everyday life, allowing for a wide array of special talents to unveil themselves: telekinesis, an infinite intellectual capacity, the ability to change her appearance on a molecular level, you name it – Lucy is quickly transcending her corporeal body and assuming her ultimate form, not unlike the lady who smashed the McDonalds drive-thru window.
This premise is, of course, bunk – disproven time and again, yet still perpetuated through the ages (thanks in large part to movies like Lucy) – but if you’re looking for rigorously-tested theory to be the basis for a Luc Besson film, chances are you’re preset for disappointment. What Besson does, and does masterfully, is establish stakes and audience sympathy for his protagonist with ruthless efficiency. This is due in large part to a wonderful performance from Scarlett Johansson in the lead, who sells the daffy plot with ease, transitioning from a desperate, scared victim of circumstance into an emotionally detached, transcendent being without losing us along the way. It’s funny to see her reaching into the same bag of tricks she used to stunning effect in Under the Skin in service of what is essentially agreeable hogwash, made even funnier when played against a completely laid-back turn from Morgan Freeman as a neuroscientist whose default reaction is bewilderment followed by immediate acceptance.
Although sold as an ass-kicking story of a super-powered heroine, the film has little in the way of true action. Our protagonist is evolving at such a pronounced rate it’s like watching somebody play a video game while entering an escalating series of cheat codes that remove any suspense from the proceedings. Besson gets his kicks from constantly subverting those expectations, having epic showdowns end with a gang of mobsters flailing impotently as they float above us, or most memorably, quickly dispatched with a simple wave of Lucy’s hand. His visual goals are psychedelic although he comes well short of Kubrickian phantasmagoria and settles for a sort of relentless, coke-fueled enthusiasm. The film has the confidence of a first-year student doing rails off of his Philosophy 101 syllabus.
Instead of using his premise as an opportunity to turn Lucy into an unstoppable agent of vengeance, Besson makes her motives more altruistic, taking every opportunity to expand the depth and breadth of her knowledge or to experience all of history in a matter of seconds, even while all of the people around her keep trying to devolve the proceedings into your traditional action picture. Nowhere is this dichotomy more apparent than in the final sequence of the movie which features a massive shootout. It’s not that unlike the one that occurs at the conclusion of Besson’s The Professional. It happens concurrently with Lucy transcending the human plane and traveling back through time for a recreation of The Creation of Adam with the first hominid that shares her name. The film is jam-packed with audacious sequences like this, and Besson imbues each of them with a clarity of purpose and cinematic energy that is altogether lacking in much of today’s cinema. For many, this film will either be too stupid to commit to any of its philosophical underpinnings or too concerned with being and time to indulge us in the stupid relentless action we’ve paid to see. For me, this rests comfortably in the middle, much as Besson has done throughout his career, using the tools of his trade so effectively that his preposterous movies feel more alive than a dozen ostensibly ‘smarter’ films that lie flaccid on the screen.
