Lucy is a movie that is being sold as a thriller, superhero story. This is not exactly correct. In fact, the previews cleverly hide what is really going on in this tale. Much to my surprise and amusement, it has elements of a thriller and the presence of a character resembling a superhero but it’s really about something else altogether.
Let me give you a few hints. Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick wrote and filmed a story about space travel and mystery with technology run amok in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). In the end, the film surprised us with elements indicating it was about something else altogether. What happened to the astronaut at the end of the story? Not sure. Other films and stories also show a presence. HG Wells’ The Time Machine (1960 version) and a similar short story tell about a man discovering a way to evolve and have some surprising results. I would mention the name of this story but it eludes me. Other movies like Electric Dreams (1984) and The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957) (my favorite 1950s B Sci-Fi film) are front and center. What happens to the computer at the end of ED and where does Scott Carey, the protagonist of TISM, go at the end when he exits his house through a pore in a screen window in the basement? The same place as the Astronaut in 2001?
The story of Lucy is beautifully imagined and visualized with stunning special effects images and clever plot devices to move the story forward. Lucy only runs 89 minutes, which includes the end credits. It is a monument to intelligent screen editing – cut out what you don’t need and if what you have on film is good, the editing will make it outstanding.
Lucy, played by Scarlett Johansson, is a young lady living in the Orient who gets involved in a drug smuggling deal that goes bad. She ends up a quasi-super hero, which is what most folks going to the film think the story is about. Wrong. They are thinking of the current Marvel series The Avengers in which SJ plays a true super hero, The Black Widow. This story is something else altogether.
Along for the ride is Morgan Freeman as a professor with theories of the human brain that are all hypothesis until they start happening right before his unbelieving eyes.
Director Luc Besson usually makes violent potboilers with rather dimwitted stories and mass amounts of blood and gore. There is a bit of it here but ignore it. When the blood stops the real story begins. Where it’s going and what you will see on the way to the ending is what I can say no more about.
As I was driving home after this movie I thought a lot about the images and outcome. This movie affected me the same way as all of those I mention above – massively.
Rated 3.9 out of 4.0 on the way to 100%
