Lucy

From La Femme Nikita and The Professional to The Fifth Element, writer/director Luc Besson has created some of the toughest, most memorable female action heroes in cinematic history. Meet the latest: Lucy (Scarlett Johansson). Lucy is attractive, not tall, not muscular, with a cutish face, vulnerable, even gullible--An unlikely action hero, an unlikely drug-racket battling, science’s accidental guinea pig who is about to prove unwittingly the theory of an eminent scientist concerning the infinite power of the human brain, when fully tapped. 

Lucy is a woman living in Taipei, Taiwan who is forced to work as a drug ‘mule’ (credits say so!) for the Mob. She is tricked into delivering a locked brief-case, hand-cuffed to her by her short-term date, who works for the Korean drug ring. She then finds herself waking up with an incision on her abdomen and is told by a British gang-member that a drug has been implanted in her body, as well as some other people of different nationalities.

After a violent incident, the drug, CPH4, inadvertently leaks into her system, which allows her to use more than the normal 10% of her brain's capacity, thereby changing her into a superhuman. As a result, she can absorb all types of information instantaneously, is able to move objects with her mind, and can choose not to feel pain or other discomforts, in addition to other abilities. With her abilities growing and fatal consequences likely, Lucy only has a short amount of time left to find the drug-lords responsible for her new found powers, and contacts the scientist, whose research may be the key to saving her.

Shot in New York, at the Cité du Cinéma (a new mega-studio located on the outskirts of Paris), cliffs of Étretat in northern France and Taipei 101, one of the world's tallest skyscrapers, this film has the highest budget in the production company (EuropaCorp)’s history. Luc Besson had never put so many special effects into a movie. Some footage was filmed with IMAX cameras. All that was truly worth it. If you still wish there was more of it, you have a point, because a lot of time is spent sermonising and explaining scientific principles in a Power-Point presentation, and the film is just 89 minutes long.

Scarlett Johansson is blank-faced and business-like most of the time, using a detached stare to express her feelings. All that she experiences is depicted externally, though, through stunning visual effects. It is a matter of speculation what difference, if any, would it have made if the part was played by the original choice, Angelina Jolie. Although he does it convincingly and with élan, Morgan Freeman has by now had just about enough of the sagacious old wizards’ roles. Min-Sik Choi (Old Boy, 2003) continues to strike terror as the ice-man vice-man Kang. Amr Waked as the French policeman is impressive, although his motivation (the kiss notwithstanding) is ill-defined.

Trying to shake –off the label of a female character specialist, Besson has said about Lucy, “Big Blue is about two guys; Subway is an adventure with two guys and one girl; Nikita is a girl and a bunch of guys. Léon (in Léon: The Professional) is a very big, strong guy, but Mathilda is as strong as him. I always try to do the best for both. I don’t feel that I’m a specialist in female characters. I mean, when you see Lucy, there’s one girl and three guys. So I try to treat them the best I can, no matter what they are.”

The premise of Lucy is that with the help of some drug(s), we could access largely unused parts of the brain, and thus achieve great mental strength, even mind over matter. Such theories have been challenged ever since they were propounded. Recently, there is a protest wave that Besson got it wrong. Yes, we do use 10-15% of the brain’s capacity at one time, but we use the rest of the capacity on other occasions, because the full capacity is not needed at any given moment.

Besson counters, “It’s totally not true. Do they think that I don’t know this? I work on this thing for nine years and they think that I don’t know it’s not true? Of course I know it’s not true! But, you know, there are lots of facts in the film that are totally right. The CPH4, even if it’s not the real name--because I want to hide the real name--this molecule exists, and is carried by the woman at six weeks of pregnancy. Yes, it’s true that every cell in our body is sending 1,000 messages per second, per cell. And in fact, the theory of the 10 percent is an old theory from the ’60s. It’s never been proven. Some people worked on it, and it sounds like it’s not the truth. What is true is that we’re using only 15 percent of our neurons at one time. We never use 100%. We use 15 percent on left, and then after that, we use 15 percent on the right. But we never use more than 15 percent at one time.”

Without spoiling it for readers, I can say that Lucy, like Nikita and the protagonist in The Big Blue, has an ambiguous ending. Not everybody enjoys such endings, but Besson argues, “I think it’s how characters become legends. What about God? Everyone’s been talking about him for thousands of years and no one has seen him.”

There are loose ends too. Occasionally, the drugs/sci-fi/woman v/s fate elements appear incongruous, and clash. Special effects are overdone in places, and underplayed in others.                                                                                                

The best way to enjoy the film would be to treat it as pure fiction, and rationality, reality checks and smooth cinematic flow take a back seat.

Rating: **1/2

Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeDvSBpPnF4&list=PLpTga61DBp6CSdkmUGduMFOnSrwbML_DL