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LUCY
The 2014 spectacle Lucy is an intriguing premise that sadly gets buried behind a lot of cinematic smoke and mirrors that consistently challenge viewer attention span.
The film stars Scarlett Johanssen as a young woman in Taiwan who inadvertently finds herself involved with some powerful drug dealers who force her to be a drug mule by placing the drugs in her stomach surgically, but the effects that this drug have on our heroine after she attempts to remove them are something she can't explain, rationalize, or escape from.
Director screenwriter Luc Besson (The Fifth Element; The Professional) has taken an interesting idea for a movie and given us an overblown and over stylized story beyond the realm of true entertainment value and into the territory of muddled confusion and occasional boredom.
Virgin cinematic territory is definitely approached here where the scientific fact that human beings only utilize ten percent of their brain capacity and what would happen if they used more than that is explored. Once the drug has been removed from Lucy's body, it is revealed that her brain is working at 20% capacity and that the growth has not stopped so she seeks help from a renowned scientist who specializes in the study of the brain (Morgan Freeman).
This film alienates the viewer from jump by setting the story in Taiwan and forcing the viewer to deal with a lot of characters who don't speak English, which adds an appropriate tension to Lucy's story in some places, making her seem more alone in this, but most of the time, it was just an annoyance that added to the confusion of what was going on. The story offers connection to evolution and what is happening to Lucy that seem to slow down the story and though a connection is eventually provided, it just takes a little too long to get there. Johanssen presents an initially interesting character who eventually disappears in a cloud of fancy editing and visual effects. There's a lot of technical expertise involved in the execution of this story, sadly the story and its entertainment value are sacrificed in the process.
The 2014 spectacle Lucy is an intriguing premise that sadly gets buried behind a lot of cinematic smoke and mirrors that consistently challenge viewer attention span.
The film stars Scarlett Johanssen as a young woman in Taiwan who inadvertently finds herself involved with some powerful drug dealers who force her to be a drug mule by placing the drugs in her stomach surgically, but the effects that this drug have on our heroine after she attempts to remove them are something she can't explain, rationalize, or escape from.
Director screenwriter Luc Besson (The Fifth Element; The Professional) has taken an interesting idea for a movie and given us an overblown and over stylized story beyond the realm of true entertainment value and into the territory of muddled confusion and occasional boredom.
Virgin cinematic territory is definitely approached here where the scientific fact that human beings only utilize ten percent of their brain capacity and what would happen if they used more than that is explored. Once the drug has been removed from Lucy's body, it is revealed that her brain is working at 20% capacity and that the growth has not stopped so she seeks help from a renowned scientist who specializes in the study of the brain (Morgan Freeman).
This film alienates the viewer from jump by setting the story in Taiwan and forcing the viewer to deal with a lot of characters who don't speak English, which adds an appropriate tension to Lucy's story in some places, making her seem more alone in this, but most of the time, it was just an annoyance that added to the confusion of what was going on. The story offers connection to evolution and what is happening to Lucy that seem to slow down the story and though a connection is eventually provided, it just takes a little too long to get there. Johanssen presents an initially interesting character who eventually disappears in a cloud of fancy editing and visual effects. There's a lot of technical expertise involved in the execution of this story, sadly the story and its entertainment value are sacrificed in the process.