Lucy

Over the years, I’ve noticed that if there’s a genre of movies that struggles to stand out these days, it’s most definitely action. “How can I say that?” you may be asking assuming someone’s actually reading this “action is one of the most successful genres out there”. True, but there’s a difference between being successful and being good. Most standalone action flicks have a tendency of being generic, repetitive and highly predictable. For example.

“They took his innocence. They took his lover. Now he’s going to take their lives.”

I’ll bet you any money that unoriginal as hell tagline could apply to at least ten different movies. Though funnily enough, one that it matches up with is Deadpool, one of my all-time favourite movies. Proving that you can still make the generic action movie setup work so long as you put enough effort in. Well written characters and dialogue can make up for a lot. That’s probably why the Marvel movies are so great. Though in fairness, they do have the advantage of having a LOT of source material to draw from while most others have to make something up on the spot. And even then, as much as I love the MCU, it doesn’t always avoid the generic action movie clichés.

I bet you forgot there was a love interest in Doctor Strange, didn’t you?

But stuff like Killer Elite, Parker and pretty much all the Expendables movies kind of blend together (and all star Jason Statham we’ve just realised). These days, you gotta have something unique if you wanna stand out from the crowd. Ironically, Lucy’s premise isn’t 100% unique. But seeing as how the last movie that tried this idea was Transcendence, I think it’s safe to say someone else deserves a crack at it.

 

We begin with a distractingly bad CGI protohuman drinking from a lake before rather suddenly cutting to modern day Taiwan where an American called Lucy (played by Scarlett Johansson) is set up by her thankfully soon to be dead scumbag of a boyfriend Richard to deliver a package for a mob boss called Mr Jang. A sequence that is very badly intercut with stock footage of a gazelle being hunted by a pack of lions which frankly may as well all be wearing collars with the word “symbolism” printed on them.

The package contains four packets of something called CPH4, a highly valuable new synthetic drug which he plans to distribute over Europe. To get them there, Jang has the packets sewn into the abdomens of Lucy and three other unwilling individuals and then arranges for them to travel there. His ingenious scheme falls apart when one of his henchmen decides it’s a good idea to kick Lucy in the exact area the merchandise is being kept, breaking the packet and releasing the CPH4 into her bloodstream. Leading to the delightful silliness of Lucy convulsing her way up the side of a wall and onto the ceiling.

Somebody better call an exorcist.

Now suddenly having Kirito level reflexes, Lucy fights her way through her captors, gunning them all down and even shrugging off being shot before escaping to a hospital to get the packet and the bullet removed. So, what the hell is going on? Well it turns out that CPH4 is a synthetic version of the same chemical humans are exposed to in the womb, specifically the ones that help develop consciousness (or something like that, we weren’t paying that close attention). Ok, but how does that explain the new abilities Lucy’s getting? Well, that brings us to this action movie’s “unique something”. It works on the myth that we humans only use 10% of our brain power. And yeah, it is a myth. As far as scientists are aware, we pretty much use all of our brain all the time. So the idea that this synthetic drug is slowly unlocking the rest of Lucy’s brain’s potential is kind of ridiculous, but hey, I’ve suspended my disbelief further than this before. So, let’s see where they go with it.

Where Lucy goes with it is straight back to Mr Jang’s place to kill his henchmen and then stab him through the hands but specifically chooses not to kill him despite the fact that by attacking him, you’ve not only shown you’re not staying on task but also are instilling in him a grudge against you, thereby painting a massive target on your back… Keep in mind, she’s supposed to be super smart at this point.

After this, Lucy gains the power of manipulating technology, which she uses to contact Morgan Freeman, who I just remembered, also starred in Transcendence. Apparently, he’s the guy to go to when you’re hyper evolving into a supreme god like being. Makes sense. He’s kinda the expert what with him literally being God a couple of times. The downside to Lucy’s accelerated mental development is that it’s also killing her. Her mind will eventually become too powerful for the rest of her body so Morgan Freeman (or Dr Samuel Norman as he’s known in this movie) advises her to make the most of it, inviting her over to his lab in Paris to properly research her.

On her way there (and after discovering her next new power is shapeshifting), she contacts a random police captain, asking if he wants to be a main character. He agrees and sets about locating and bringing in the others containing CPH4 packets. Speaking of which, while on her flight to Paris, Lucy is forced to ingest the rest of her packet as she suddenly starts melting… Because aggravating her condition further… is good?

It’s rare that when you’ve got a drug problem, the solution is more drugs. In fact… Yeah, I’d say it’s never the solution.

By the time she stabilizes and lands in Paris, the police have found all the carriers and had them taken to a hospital. But through her new power of being able to tap into electrical signals, Lucy learns that Jang and his men have also arrived, intent on getting back the CPH4, so she teams up the police captain to go stop them. Well, I’m being generous by calling it a team up. She really just needed a car to get to the hospital and his just happened to be available. She handles the rest what with her new power (geez, Super Mario doesn’t get power-ups this frequently) of telekinesis.

One car chase later, they get there just in time to save exactly zero of the innocent drug carriers and Lucy proceeds to take out all of Jang’s men no problem before then kissing the police captain for no apparent reason. They seriously only just met, have no chemistry and their relationship (if you can even call it one) goes absolutely nowhere from here.

Congrats, Legend of Titanic. We’ve finally found a romance subplot more lifeless than yours. That feels like more an achievement then it really should.

Now with the rest of the drugs in hand, Lucy and the captain go to meet up with Dr Norman. Figuring out that she’s gonna reach a point where she understands the universe in its entirety, they ask if she can explain what it all means to them. But as Lucy shows through her powers of mind reading and becoming a human projector (remember, according to this movie, ALL humans have the potential to do this crap), it is impossible to properly convey this kind of information in a way we can comprehend through words and numbers. So, she offers to create a super advanced computer database which can store it all and allow the scientists to understand it over time.

My previous criticism against Lucy kind of falls apart as Jang decides to go kill Lucy himself which… yeah, that’s pretty dumb. Thanks to ingesting the remaining CPH4 (the only reward you were going to get out of this, so you’ve also lost your main motivation outside of revenge), she’s just gotten the powers of matter manipulation and time travel. You’ve got a handgun…. You’ve lost… Just go home. Maybe get some physical therapy for those hands. Rethink your career. You’ve got options, is what I’m saying.

But no. He carries on, getting into a shootout with police while Lucy, now having reached 100% of her brain’s potential travels back through time, briefly meets that protohuman from the start, then goes even further back to the beginning of existence itself before disappearing altogether moments before Jang would have shot her, allowing the captain to shoot him dead.

So, Dr Norman and his friends get a super computer along with the meaning of life, the universe and everything stored on a cosmic thumb drive (gonna be real embarrassing if one of those scientists accidentally copies his porn onto there) and the captain gets a cosmic text message from Lucy saying “I’m everywhere” before the movie abruptly ends.

 

Lucy is… a weird movie. I’m not calling it bad. Unlike Transcendence, I was never completely lost as to what was happening, or face palming at anything egregiously stupid. And the movie itself isn’t five miles up its own arse with how clever it thinks it is. In fact, the whole idea of the movie is trying to explain the unknowable.

An idea that failed to work on Baron given the poor synopsis he’s given today.

There’s some good action and it’s all paced very well. I think the biggest issue is that it’s hard to get all that invested due to the complete lack of tension. The goofy editing takes away from any of the seriousness the first few minutes tries to establish, and from there on out, after Lucy activates her god mode, she’s pretty much unstoppable. She is without equal and by extension without threat, therefore she is without worry. All the action and drama feels a little pointless when you realize this is pretty much a done deal.

Most of the characters are one note, Lucy herself being the only halfway decent one, having some development throughout and generating a bit of sympathy for herself. More than Will Caster ever did at least.

To summarise, Lucy is an okay, at times ridiculous flick that tries and arguably fails to seem more intelligent than it actually is. Probably didn’t help that the scene where Morgan Freeman is giving his wise monologue about evolution and human nature is intercut with scenes of animals doing each other… yep, that actually happens in this movie.