Lucy, not really a must go and see film

Lucy

Take a good idea, a potentially great idea, and put it in the hands of a director (Luc Besson) that is known for stories of triads, professional assassins and revenges and you get Lucy. But the problem is that the brain expansion and the Taipei triad scenario don’t match.

This movie was going to be all about execution, and it doesn’t deliver. It is not even entertainment. The director uses the same tricks every time (Corridors for example: in one case Lucy makes every french cop fall to the ground with the flick of a finger, in another every mob member flies into the ceiling, and while the former was kind of fun, the latter is just dull, dull, dull, and repetitive).

The movie doesn’t really build to a climax, there is no surprise or twist of events, it isn’t about an hero trying something, it isn’t about a conspiracy, it isn’t even about trying to survive the Taipei triad while trying to understand the universe by your expanding brain. It is just a BAD summer movie, backed by two well-known actors and lot’s of publicity.

Ah, the actors! Scarlett Johansson plays the role but somehow the scenes where she walks into or out of rooms, corridors, etc. didn’t convince me. She doesn’t have the walk. She’s competent, but not much else is there. She is not very expressive in the action parts of the role and is better in the close up dialogs and interactions mainly due to her magnetic look. Morgan Freeman playing the role of a scientist teaching in the Sorbonne is now doing these roles of the “expert” that gives instant credibility to any story (was the same thing with Transcendence). In the end they are the duck calls for people to go and see the film. They do their job, but no one will remember them for this movie.

One final thing. What was that in the end of the film, were after building the most powerful next generation super computer that looked like a live termite ant tower, the computer expends a protuberance to give “All knowledge a 100% brain has” to Morgan Freeman in a USB stick? WHAT? And a big clunky one too! And Morgan Freeman stands there, astonished, holding the USB stick in the air and probably thinking “Is this what I’m doomed to do for the rest of my acting career?