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It’s something of a rarity to see an action movie anchored by a famous female lead. Over the years, we’ve had some awesome examples (such as Sigourney Weaver in Alien) and a few stinkers too (Angelina Jolie in Tomb Raider).
Scarlett Johansson’s turn as the eponymous heroine in this sci-fi thriller is more middle-of-the-road. There’s certainly fun to be found and it’s enjoyable enough, but it’s let down by being overly silly with some weak characters.
The film opens with Lucy (Johansson) living in Taiwan and being tricked into becoming a drug mule by her boyfriend, who just happens to be employed by the local drug cartel.
Things go well until she is forced to carry a highly-valuable synthetic drug called CPH4 inside her stomach.
She is captured and during a struggle, the bag bursts and the CPH4 is released into her system, which leads to her developing increasingly powerful physical and mental attributes, such as telekinesis, time travel and telepathy.
In an attempt to discover what is happening to her, Lucy tracks down famous scientist Samuel Norman (Freeman) who might be able to shed light on her condition. However, she begins to suffer dangerous side effects from the drug and finds herself in a race against time to not only discover more about the nature of true power, but also to escape the drug lords who are pursuing her.
The film’s premise is based on the fallacy (which is repeated in the actual script a fair few times) that humans only use 10 per cent of their brain. While this has been disproven many times in scientific theory, the director has chosen to exploit its widespread assumption to ludicrous levels.
Lucy is very enjoyable at first when our heroine is discovering her powers and taking down bad guys in a number of simple-yet-effective ways. As with many similar movies, the main character learning about their superhuman abilities and trying to adapt to their new powers provides a few humorous well-constructed scenes.
However, the empathy we have for the character is short-lived as the more Lucy accesses of her brain capacity, the harder she has to try to hang on to what is left of her humanity. The film fails to give this notion a satisfactory payoff, as she essentially becomes both omnipresent and omniscient without any emotional depth or conflict to get the audience invested in her character.
Even worse, and certainly the most potent flaw in the movie, is that she suffers badly from ‘Superman Syndrome’. That is, she is so powerful and god-like halfway through the film that the run-of-the-mill gangsters chasing her pose absolutely no threat. The baddies are essentially filler to pass the time and give the director an excuse to throw in some (admittedly decent) visual effects as Lucy unleashes her true powers.
It’s very difficult to enjoy a film that is trying to be a thriller when the main character is practically invincible and there’s no opponent with similar abilities for an exciting face-off.
Past halfway, all suspense and drama is sucked out of the story as you know there is absolutely nothing that can stop Lucy (especially not the long line of gangsters who march lemming-like into her path to be blasted aside with one swipe of the hand), and the whole experience becomes increasingly flat.
It’s also disappointing to have an actor like Freeman be reduced to a thankless supporting role whose only job is to spew out exposition to spoon-feed the audience scientific explanations for the visuals and events being portrayed. None of his usual presence is brought to the table, much to the detriment of the movie.
Johansson, though, is faultless. She brings plenty of confidence to her role, which makes her transformation from into a superpowered goddess much more believable. She is in practically every scene, so without a certain authority, the film would have been a train wreck, but she carries it well and proves a great casting choice.
There are other positives too. There is a terrific car chase among the streets of Paris, and the film’s philosophical questions about humanity actually give a strong reason to pause for thought and question whether having such power would be beneficial.
The film’s relatively short running time (just under an hour and a half) is also a benefit as it never has time to get bogged down in scientific ramblings as the action zips from scene to scene.
Overall, this is a decent movie but it won’t stick too long in the memory. It borrows plenty from other movies such as The Matrix and especially Limitless, but unfortunately fails to be as engrossing as either of those.
Johansson does her best and plays her part well but, ultimately, the movie is let down by the very concept of unlimited power.
A lack of suspense is the antithesis of a good thriller.
