Movie Review: Watch Scarlett Johansson’s Lucy for stunning special effects
Lucy is like watching a puppy run into a glass door again and again, bumping it’s head while another door is wide open. You know that it is being stupid and downright dumb, but it is just so beautiful and enthusiastic that you still don’t want it to stop.
Film:
Lucy
Director:
Luc Besson
Starring:
Scarlett Johansson, Morgan Freeman
Genre:
Action, Sci-Fi
Stars:
3
First things first: Lucy is not a Scarlett Johansson movie. It is completely 'owned' by the team that put together the special effects. If you thought computer graphics made Avatar and Inception multi-million dollar blockbusters, hold your breath, Lucy belongs to the 'breathtaking' category!But more of that later.
So Lucy is a hardcore action movie where the screen is almost always painted red with blood. It is about a young American woman studying in Taipei, China. She is captured by a Korean drug cartel when her friend asks her to deliver a suspicious briefcase to a druglord in a hotel. The case contains packets of a blue powder, later revealed as a synthetically produced drug called CPH4, which are put in her intestines to export abroad.
While in captivity, an angry mobster loses his cool and kicks her hard in the stomach: the packet breaks inside her, and the drug mixes with the blood. Soon, the drug takes hold of her, and Lucy changes: her body and mind become more powerful, and soon she goes on a rampage, killing the men who kept her captive. And while she's busy dodging death, the young girl takes on another mission: locate the other three packages that were placed inside three other men sent to Paris, Berlin and Rome.
In all this splattering of blood, we also have Morgan Freeman, a professor holding forth on how humans have access to only 10% of their ‘cerebral capacity’ and what the possibilities could be if we were to access more. Meanwhile, we see Lucy’s capacity climbing quickly.
Watch: Movie review
The Concept
Now, there are indeed some flaws in the concept of Lucy. The urban legend that humans use only a very small percentage of their brain’s full capacity has been debunked time and again, yet our fascination with the subject never ebbs. Luc Besson has tried to cash-in on this never-ending obsession and we don’t blame him as long as he gives us a good movie.
Even since the trailer for the movie hit the web, Lucy has been the butt of jokes for its illogical premise. Bizarre concepts such as controlling of others’ minds, bending the laws of physics, rewinding time, all just because you are under the influence of a man-made drug is just too far-fetched.
Still, given the film's awesome special effects, we say this hyperbole is a small price to pay.
Scarlett Johansson
Scarlett may not have been the best thing about the movie, but she was still spectacular (Come on, who can win over the scene where they showed the creation of the Universe!Super spectacular). She does everything we expect of her, great acting, great action, great emotions too. There was a scene which requires special mention: when she talks to her mother on phone and tells her how she can feel everything that has ever happened to her, ever since she was born. How she remembers her ‘thousand kisses’, ‘taste of her milk’ and the process of her birth; that was some really emotional stuff right there.
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Here is a conspiracy theory of my own: talking about Scarlett Johansson, why is she suddenly all into movies that make no logical sense? From a man falling in love with a computer’s operating system (Her) to accessing 100% ‘cerebral capacity’ of her brain (Lucy). We wonder what the deal is.
The Special Effects
She sits on a chair, waving hands in thin air as if accessing an iPad, only she was rewinding time. New York Times Square changes over and over, centuries after centuries to a billion years ago where a dinosaur comes attacking towards her. She sees the Universe, the origin of life, everything and we are just as awestruck as her. The last ten minutes of the movie are simply ethereal (I am soon going to run out of synonyms for ‘breathtaking’) and every second of this segment is worth every crime committed against physics and logic.
Lucy is like watching a puppy run into a glass door again and again, bumping it’s head while another door is wide open. You know that it is being stupid and downright dumb, but it is just so beautiful and enthusiastic that you still don’t want it to stop.
Do we need repeating? Watch it for the ‘breathtaking’ VFX and Scarlett Johansson and for 90 minutes of visual delight. However, we suggest you leave your reasoning powers at home for this one.
