Lucy, the titular character played by Scarlett Johansson, begins the movie as a partying blonde who gets involved with a shady character. After a deal goes wrong with the mob, she becomes an unwilling drug mule for a new drug which happens to be injected into her system. The effects of this drug: it increases her mental capacity from 10% to higher levels, giving her access to a range of superpowers. She then wants to share her new found enlightenment with the rest of the human race through a university professor, Morgan Freeman, who has made a study of the human brain.
If you can't get over the 'only use 10% of our brains' myth being exploited for this story, you probably won't enjoy this movie. If you can let it go, what lies underneath this is a slick action movie when it wants to be. When it doesn't want to be an action movie, it cleverly subverts the audience expectations as Lucy relies less on violence as her mental capacity and superpowers improves. For example, at the beginning she uses some cool kung-fu and gun skills to escape the mob. However, later in the movie when they line up for a big showdown, she just calmly walks through them.
The acting here is solid. Morgan Freeman puts in his normal solid performance as the university professor, but Scarlett Johansson really stands out. As she becomes more intelligent, she captures the growing feeling of feeling detached from humanity even as she becomes more enlightened. The only failure of this movie is the lack of a solid villain. They try to establish the the mob boss as the villain, but he never feels like a true threat to Lucy.
Despite the lack of a good villain, Lucy is a good movie. It is fast paced with good action and a good story. It doesn't let itself get bogged down with philosophy even though it has a message (knowledge is good, ignorance is bad). It is definitely a movie I would recommend checking out among all the big-budget disappointments currently out (I am looking at you Turtles).
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