Lucy

(Luc Besson/2014/France)

Lucy is a happy go lucky student living in Taipei who gets entangled in a vicious Korean gang’s drugs mule operation. As a result she ingests a super drug that allows her to utilise more than the usual 10% of brainpower. Does she go all the way up to 11? No, in fact she goes all the way up to 100.It’s an interesting premise but this is an action movie with a race against the clock finale so any effort at guessing what a 100% effective brain can do is flippant at best. For the purposes of this film Lucy can do just anything she fucking wants you puny underachieving 10 percenters. This includes making people float and stick to ceilings, turning on other peoples TVs from the other side of the world and listening to phone calls by grabbing them, Matrix style, out of thin air. If I could get to 15% and turn off the alarm from across the room in the morning and have breakfast on the go downstairs while I got dressed upstairs I’d be more than happy! If you haven’t guessed this is all a bit silly but it is executed with an acute sense of pacing and flashy action. Luc Besson knows what works and Scarlett Johansson plays the lead perfectly. It’s a gum chewer but the gum is tasty.

(3/5)