Scarlett Johansson stars as a woman on a mission in Luc Besson’s sexy sci-fi thriller LUCY
LUCY (Luc Besson, 2014)
Opens Friday, July 25
www.lucymovie.com
First there was Anne Parillaud in La Femme Nikita, followed by Milla Jovovich in The Fifth Element and The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc and Rie Rasmussen in Angel-A, and now there’s Scarlett Johansson playing the latest different kind of female superhero in a visually striking film by French writer-director Luc Besson. Johansson stars as the title character in Lucy, a student in Taipei who gets suckered into a drug deal that goes very wrong. She is turned into a mule carrying a bag of a new synthetic drug, CPH4, for evil kingpin Mr. Jang (Oldboy’s Choi Min-sik in his first international film) that has been surgically implanted into her intestines. But the bag opens inside her and releases the substance into her system, with neurons firing everywhere as she quickly realizes that her brainpower is reaching unheard-of levels. While seeking advice from Professor Samuel Norman (Morgan Freeman) at the Sorbonne, she also enlists French police captain Pierre Del Rio (Syriana’s Amr Waked) to help her track down three other bags of CPH4, primarily to feed her brain, which is using 20, 30, then 40% and more of its capacity. Her physical and mental abilities continue to increase at an alarming rate, giving her superhuman strength and confidence but also costing her a piece of her humanity as she transforms into a robotlike woman on a mission. Also increasing is the size of various plot holes and the overall level of absurdity, but Johansson is so mesmerizing that it’s easy to forgive Besson for getting way too excited about the myriad possibilities green screens and advanced computer technology gave him. As with the somewhat similar but ultimately disappointing Transcendence, Lucy directly and indirectly references a slew of sci-fi flicks, from 2001: A Space Odyssey and Demon Seed to Altered States and The Terminator as well as the noir classic DOA. It’s also a natural extension of Johansson’s alluring performance as the voice of Samantha the operating system in Spike Jonze’s wonderful her. Yes, for a movie about a crazy-smart woman, Lucy can get pretty stupid, but Johansson overcomes that drawback with her superb acting chops and, well, graceful intelligence.