'Lucy' (15)

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After becoming advertently caught up in an international drugs ring, Lucy has her stomach packed with CPH4, a synthetic chemical with the ability to increase a human’s brain capacity. After being beaten, the chemical starts to leak into her body, quickly increasing her cognitive abilities and gifting her with superpowers.

Well, it starts off being pretty ridiculous, and builds and builds to become something quite preposterous. The similarities with Transcendence, and indeed other films of the genre, are unavoidable, but whereas Transcendence took itself seriously with the notion of Johnny Depp essentially becoming God, Lucy seems to realise that it is pretty ridiculous and doesn’t ‘bottle it’ in the final scene; it goes the whole hog. I think this is the major strength of the film – it doesn’t take itself to be a great, philosophical piece about the limits of the human brain, instead teasing the audience with the possibility of an intelligent debate, before the majority of dialogue is replaced with explosions, journeys through the depths of space, and an unashamedly brash shoot-out finale. It is fun throughout, and zips along so quickly that there isn’t really time for the audience to pause to think ‘wait, what?’ before Lucy’s brain capacity has increased again and she is capable of some new feat. Scarlett Johansson is pretty good as Lucy – she is in virtually every scene, and without such a watchable and charismatic screen presence, the film would have likely died on its feet. Johansson essentially gets to play two characters, pre-CPH4 Lucy and then the superhuman version of herself, emotionless, logical and all-powerful, and she takes on both parts with relish.     

There are some aspects that are less easy to forgive, however, such as Morgan Freeman explaining the plot through incredibly forced exposition, and there is a really unnecessary car chase scene wherein many innocent policemen, and civilians, are put in danger, although I guess you could argue that Lucy knew that knocking into a car in a certain way, at a certain time wouldn’t cause fatalities. Similarly, Captain Del Rio (Amr Waked) seems strangely OK with the fact that this woman has suddenly arrived in his city with incredibly superpowers, and then allows her to drive around the city, wreaking havoc. The script also leaves much to be desired, but this is undoubtedly a film about spectacle masquerading as an intelligent sci-fi film, so some sins can be forgiven.

The plot-holes are vast and the premise is ridiculous in the extreme, but it is entertaining, and isn’t that what you want from a blockbuster? It attempts to be intelligent, it has solid action pieces, and the actors make the most of a pretty poor script, all of which makes it a pretty solid piece of popcorn amusement. Best of all, it rattles along at a brisk pace and with such a short runtime it doesn’t outstay its welcome.