,Lucy (15)
Directed by Luc Besson.
Starring Scarlett Johansson, Morgan Freeman, Min-sik Choi, Amr Waked, Julian Rhind-Tutt and Analeigh Tipton. 89 mins
Luc Besson made his name with stylish, silly thrillers like Nikita and Leon, before becoming the centre of a mini-French industry producing and often scripting far less stylish, far sillier and often brutish thrillers for Jason Statham, Liam Neeson and some French parkour experts to scowl through or leap about in. Despite all the success he has remained fundamentally a child at heart, and probably in brain as well. His films work on levels that a 13-year-old might appreciate, but a 13 year old with a sense of wonderment. Lucy looks like the work of a kid who saw 2001, The Matrix, Nikita, The Fly, Koyaanisqatsi and Tree Of Life and thought wouldn't it be cool to have a film that was a mix all of them?
Well, I think the kid has a point. Lucy is some kind of apotheosis in modern populist film making – it's a very silly film about exploring the limitless capacities of human intelligence. With shoot outs and car chases. It's a horror/ superhero/ action movie dabbling in visionary sci-fi; a film that is about a hot female who becomes an ultra cool, superhuman-to-the-point-of-omnipotence killing machine, while encompassing all of human evolution. Pretentious? Oui, but I prefer to think of it as making an effort.
Lucy (Johansson) is a dopey American student partying in Taipei who takes an enforced career move into the drug mule business. At the same time Professor Morgan Freeman is giving a lecture on how humans only use 10% of their brain's capacity and speculating on what could be achieved if the other 90% could be unleashed.
Due to circumstances too improbable to relate here, Lucy is in the process of finding out. The percentage of her brain that she can use is increasing rapidly towards 100% – the transformation is part horror story disintegration/ part superhero origins. And what does she do first with her expanding mental capacity? Become an invincible slaughterhouse, of course, and one with a callous disregard for the safety of innocent bystanders. Once she has mown down a few of the henchmen of the gangster (Oldboy himself Min-sik Choi) who inadvertently did this to her, she decides to find Prof Freeman and share the knowledge.
One of the glorious contradictions of Lucy is that it is a film about maximizing human potential where everything has been carefully visualised to help the slowest of audiences follow it. Director Besson inter-cuts the story with wildlife footage to heighten or presage events on screen. It's like subliminal messaging, in slow motion. So as Lucy walks into danger he cuts to a mouse sniffing at the cheese in a mousetrap. As her mental capabilities grow he indulges in various visual flourishes such as having her see the beams connecting all the mobile telephone calls. As she approaches 100% her dominance is such that she is like someone swiping the world to do their bidding in an Ipad commercial. He also manages to throw in a few of his trademark Besson scenes, such as a multitude of heavily armed police shooting away in a narrow corridor and one man going for his bazooka.
Like many summer films Lucy asks you to turn your brain off, but in this case it seems an honourable position. It is a film that will be greeted by some with hoots of derision which is not entirely unreasonable, but somehow unforgivable. For such people I would point to the door marked Expendables and have them shooed vigorously towards it.
Click here for a review of Besson's Leon
Directed by Luc Besson.
Starring Scarlett Johansson, Morgan Freeman, Min-sik Choi, Amr Waked, Julian Rhind-Tutt and Analeigh Tipton. 89 mins
Luc Besson made his name with stylish, silly thrillers like Nikita and Leon, before becoming the centre of a mini-French industry producing and often scripting far less stylish, far sillier and often brutish thrillers for Jason Statham, Liam Neeson and some French parkour experts to scowl through or leap about in. Despite all the success he has remained fundamentally a child at heart, and probably in brain as well. His films work on levels that a 13-year-old might appreciate, but a 13 year old with a sense of wonderment. Lucy looks like the work of a kid who saw 2001, The Matrix, Nikita, The Fly, Koyaanisqatsi and Tree Of Life and thought wouldn't it be cool to have a film that was a mix all of them?
Well, I think the kid has a point. Lucy is some kind of apotheosis in modern populist film making – it's a very silly film about exploring the limitless capacities of human intelligence. With shoot outs and car chases. It's a horror/ superhero/ action movie dabbling in visionary sci-fi; a film that is about a hot female who becomes an ultra cool, superhuman-to-the-point-of-omnipotence killing machine, while encompassing all of human evolution. Pretentious? Oui, but I prefer to think of it as making an effort.
Lucy (Johansson) is a dopey American student partying in Taipei who takes an enforced career move into the drug mule business. At the same time Professor Morgan Freeman is giving a lecture on how humans only use 10% of their brain's capacity and speculating on what could be achieved if the other 90% could be unleashed.
Due to circumstances too improbable to relate here, Lucy is in the process of finding out. The percentage of her brain that she can use is increasing rapidly towards 100% – the transformation is part horror story disintegration/ part superhero origins. And what does she do first with her expanding mental capacity? Become an invincible slaughterhouse, of course, and one with a callous disregard for the safety of innocent bystanders. Once she has mown down a few of the henchmen of the gangster (Oldboy himself Min-sik Choi) who inadvertently did this to her, she decides to find Prof Freeman and share the knowledge.
One of the glorious contradictions of Lucy is that it is a film about maximizing human potential where everything has been carefully visualised to help the slowest of audiences follow it. Director Besson inter-cuts the story with wildlife footage to heighten or presage events on screen. It's like subliminal messaging, in slow motion. So as Lucy walks into danger he cuts to a mouse sniffing at the cheese in a mousetrap. As her mental capabilities grow he indulges in various visual flourishes such as having her see the beams connecting all the mobile telephone calls. As she approaches 100% her dominance is such that she is like someone swiping the world to do their bidding in an Ipad commercial. He also manages to throw in a few of his trademark Besson scenes, such as a multitude of heavily armed police shooting away in a narrow corridor and one man going for his bazooka.
Like many summer films Lucy asks you to turn your brain off, but in this case it seems an honourable position. It is a film that will be greeted by some with hoots of derision which is not entirely unreasonable, but somehow unforgivable. For such people I would point to the door marked Expendables and have them shooed vigorously towards it.
Click here for a review of Besson's Leon
