It's pretty safe to say you won't find a stranger summer blockbuster than "Lucy" any time soon.
An odd meditation on technology and evolution, "Lucy" is hardly the whirlwhind action flick it purports to be. Most of the fight scenes, save one or two shootouts, involve the impossibly outmatched bad guys curling into the fetal position. As the film progresses, our heroine (Scarlett Johanssen) regards them much like one would the furniture in a hotel lobby.
"Lucy" centers around a title character living in Taiwan. She's something of a party girl whose new boyfriend (Pilou Asbæk) wants her to deliver a briefcase to a Mr. Jang (Choi Min-Sik, "Oldboy"). She is understandably hesitant, especially when he offers her $500 do to so.
Soon Lucy finds herself entangled in quite a mess. Mr. Jang, it turns out, is a drug lord, and is looking for mules for his new drug, which is a synthesized version of a hormone designed to spur development in a fetus. Lucy's bag breaks open inside of her body and she absorbs a large amount of the substance, which has the side effect of unlocking her brain's full potential. Essentially, it makes her super smart and grants her magical powers to control her own body, prevent her from feeling pain and, eventually, manipulate the environment around her.
The trick is the drug is also that it's slowly killing her, and she needs more of it to stay alive, so she naturally tracks down the other mules before the bad guys get to them.
Still with me?
Yes, it's impossibly convoluted and improbable. Director Luc Besson, who has done offbeat action flicks like "The Fifth Element" and "The Transporter" series, creates perhaps his most, pardon my French, batshit-crazy action movie I've seen in a long time.
Early on, Besson splices nature footage of predators stalking prey into Lucy's plight and employs "inside-the-body" footage liberally, as well as cells dividing and combining with the main narrative, which employs a lot of macho men skulking around and Lucy silently, relentlessly finishing her work. The film's ending must be seen to be believed, and that's about all I want to say about that other than it's something akin to a discussion of philosophy, technology and evolution with a mad scientist.
Morgan Freeman co-stars as a professor whose life work is mapping the human brain, and Amr Waked plays a French police officer who helps Lucy, at least as much as he is able to given she can empty a gun without touching it, control electronic devices with her mind and turn people into unwitting, unwilling mimes trapped in an invisible box.
I fear I'm not giving "Lucy" her full due, and I'm fairly certain a good percentage of those seeing the movie will wonder, as I did, what the hell they just saw. Many will hate the movie, largely from a poor marketing campaign that paints this as a movie from the action genius behind "The Transporter."
It's a shame because to paraphrase a wise man, "Lucy" isn't the rollercoaster ride we want, but it's one we deserve.