Lucy Review

Lucy Review

Lucy is written and directed by Luc Besson and stars Scarlett Johansson, Morgan Freeman and Oldboy star Min-Sik Choi and it follows Lucy who is an American living in Taiwan and she is captured and forced to become a drug mule. However these are no ordinary drugs, they allow someone to reach 100% access to their brains potential and are stored in her stomach, but when these drugs leak inside her they enter her blood stream and she now has the drug she starts to reach her potential.

Now going into this movie I thought it could go both ways. One possibility is it could be really awesome because the trailers were great and Scarlett Johansson stars and I am a big fan of hers. The other possibility is that the  early reviews from America and Canada are true and the movie is very stupid. I don't like going into movies with expectation because I usually am disappointed so I went in with low expectations and thankfully this movie was pretty badass! This movie really did suprise me on its ambitious style executed very well by director Luc Besson. I don't want to spoil what he does but this style of filmaking could put off a regular audience member,especially because it is marketed as a conventional action sci-fi movie. I personally love how a movie can surprise me like that but some may be put off and well done to Besson for putting faith into his vision of his own idea.

Lucy is directed very well by Luc Besson and shows he still has what he promised from Leon, especially after his sub-par Minimoys series. He really does know how to make a good looking movie because visually, dare I say this is one of the years best! You can feel his fingerprints all over this movie and at times felt very similar to Leon. It has all the Besson clichés from the slow motion guns to the opera music to, most importantly,  the badass chicks!

Scarlett Johansson actually gives a very good performance,  in fact, she is great in this movie. She shows her diversity as an actress because when the film begins you see her character is basically a loser and a nobody but when these drugs get in her she turns the switch and becomes an absolute badass. The way the film is structured her brain capacity goes up by 10 percent each time and as it increases she becomes more robotic and less human. She kind of merged her black widow performance and her Under the Skin character,  showing us why she is the IT girl when it comes to action movies. Morgan Freeman is decent, he plays the same character he does in Transcendence and he is good at it. Min-Sik Choi was very menacing as the antagonist and reminded me alot of Gary Oldman in Leon. However this leads me to one of the movies most popular problems.  As Lucy's brain capacity increases she becomes more powerful and she has telekinesis and it gets abit crazy, but more importantly, Japanese gangsters can't do anything to Jean Grey. Woops sorry Lucy. This takes away some of the urgency and tension the well crafted action scenes are meant for. But he was pretty scary.

Here is the films main problem. It gets pretty dumb for a movie about someone so smart. Personally,  I dont mind that much because it's a sci-fi. Suspend disbelief.  But some people were very bothered by this which I can understand. The movie also goes in directions a conventional movie wouldn't go but it does and it gets seriously wierd and unique. These scenes are usually visually stunning and this is credit to the special effects team and Mr Besson. Also the score is very well done by Eric Serra and sets a very subtle yet mysterious and secretive sort of tone, similar to this years Captain America:The Winter Soldier.

Im going to give this movie an 8 out of 10. Scarlett Johansson proves again she is one of the best in the business and can bring in the money in a leading role with a great performance. Besson does a great job directing, however his writing is sub-par. The films visuals bring this film up alot and I would love to see this film in IMAX!
Thanks for reading and stay awesome!

Review by Lucas Savvas