Lucy – a film review by Gary Chew
Superman got his mojo by being born on Krypton. Lucy gets her mojo from having large quantities of CPH 4 in her system. In reality, the planet Krypton and the substance CPH 4 don’t exist. But that can’t keep Luc Besson from entertaining the hell out of moviegoers with his action/sci/fi flick, “Lucy.”
Scarlett Johansson stars yet again this summer as another hot female who kicks male buttocks bigtime. First it was in the ultra creepy “Under the Skin.” Now she does it even more convincingly as Lucy, a young woman who is abducted by an Asian mobster who surgically implants CPH 4 in her to mule out his new illegal drug to market. The drug looks as though it might’ve been cooked under the expert hand of Walter White.
Lucy is just your average American woman living in Taipai. She’s been dating a real loser of a guy who sets her up to make the drop of a briefcase with unknown contents to a Mr. Jang (Min-sik Choi) at a ritzy hotel. Mr. Jang is a very bad guy.
After she’s viciously abducted, Mr. Jang’s boys implant small bags of the CPH 4 in her stomach. Due to a later altercation with a rape-minded guard where she’s being imprisoned until she’s to be put on a plane to transport the drug, a large dose of the drug releases into her blood stream.
Meanwhile a half world away, Professor Norman (Morgan Freeman) is lecturing students on the human brain. Professor Norman is a very smart guy. His chatter sets up a viewer to important neurological information that gives credence to how Lucy later morphs into a human being who just might beat Clark Kent in more than just a game of rotation pool in the basement of The Daily Planet newspaper.
All the change is right there in her beautiful head … in her brain, as its wiring goes totally cerebral. She senses everything, remembers things prior to her own cognition as an infant. She’s already way ahead of Professor Norman in his own field in a matter of hours. It’s a kinetic trip for Lucy, too. She can move stuff around with her mind … that includes bad guys who work for Mr. Jang.
Professor Norman helps her get her really smart head on really straight with some wisdom that could be used more frequently than it is in our real world, alas, right at the moment. But in order for Lucy to carry out that strategy, she must employ harsh tactics … some of them rather bloody. More and more, she moves toward her goal with less and less emotion. Scarlett does an excellent “blank stare” at a movie camera while charming the hell out of an unsuspecting target … who is, most often, a dude with less than good intentions. Clark Kent would be proud. Lois Lane would be jealous.
“Lucy” gives awesome CGI; and Besson teases us with really neat documentary clips that allow for explanatory support for us folks who’s brains don’t work with the rapidity of Lucy’s.
Finally, Lucy provides Professor Norman with what he had suggested she work for, in her unfortunate state of exponentially spreading genius occurring behind those mesmerizing eyes of Ms. Johansson’s. Besson has called for lots of extreme close-ups.
Bringing it off, “Lucy” goes … maybe … a little overboard. But hey … the water’s fine and just right for ninety minutes of top-notch entertainment for people who aren’t locked into Creationism.
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