Preposterous, violent trash: oh, how I enjoyed watching Luc Besson’s film Lucy on an otherwise quite placid and calm Boxing Day. I’m not enough of a Scarlett-head to know when exactly Ms. Johansson transformed from The Girl with a Pearl Earring into the sci-fi action heroine who engages in an enormous amount of serious ass-kicking, while retaining considerable elegance. (Reminiscent of Besson’s 1990 La Femme Nikita.) Lucy is a bit like a mash-up between Kill Bill and National Geographic, with the mellifluous voice of the miraculously straight-faced Morgan Freeman carrying us through some long-winded, intermittent lectures about how much of the brain capacity we humans actually use. The premise involves Johansson as an unwilling drug courier unexpectedly ingesting a goodly amount of altered substances that rapidly accelerate her ability to reach those hitherto uncharted sectors of the mind. And then, along with her awakening, she becomes the prettiest Charles Bronson killing machine you’ve ever seen. Add in some completely over the top dialogue (I’m colonizing my mind.) Parisian car chases, Chinese drug villains, psychedelic dreamscapes, hyperactive computers, and a surfeit of bloodshed, and you’ve got the perfect entertainment for the relatively un-squeamish. And don’t worry, not much need to use any of your existing brain-power at all!
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