Runtime: 1 hour, 28 minutes
Rating: R
Director: Luc Besson
Quick Impressions:
Luc Besson really loves magical women in peril—and who can blame him? At this point in my life, I know exactly what to expect from Luc Besson, and he always delivers it, so I have no complaints. I’ve wanted to see Lucy since the first preview surprised me back in the spring. My husband’s been excited about it, too. Even my five-year-old daughter expressed some guarded interest. She really loved the Black Widow in Captain America earlier this year, and she recognized Scarlet Johansson in the TV previews for Lucy. To be honest, I think she would have genuinely enjoyed the second half of the movie, but the first half is the kind of thing that could traumatize a child for life, so she’ll just have to wait until she’s older to enjoy Lucy. Instead she got to enjoy watching Planes: Fire & Rescue with Mommy, killing time at the McDonalds with the cool playground with Daddy, and then convincing Daddy to back into the driveway at home so she could get out of the car on “a new side.”
After we left the theater the first time, my husband said he was eager for me to watch Lucy so we could talk about it. He explained that he knows I don’t read anything before watching a movie I plan to review, so he didn’t want to say anything that might influence my movie experience. I was like, “I think I know what to expect from Luc Besson. Lots of disturbingly quick cuts of gruesome violence, action scenes featuring some kick-ass woman in peril, fast pacing even if the plot doesn’t entirely make sense, sporadic bursts of truly off-kilter humor.” He replied, “That’s surprisingly accurate.”
I know most people feel that Besson’s work has steadily declined in quality since say, maybe, The Fifth Element, and I won’t deny that, but I like his movies anyway because this much can be said for them—they are not boring. I wonder if Besson experiences life at an accelerated rate. In his movies, everything happens so fast, and that is fine with me because if you only have a captive audience for ninety minutes, why waste time telling your story in slow and ineffective ways? The frenetic action in Besson’s movies always drives the plot forward, so I have no complaints there.
As I watched the first scenes of Lucy, I thought with satisfaction, I am enjoying this. I’m glad I get to see it. This experience was worth sitting through Planes: Fire & Rescue. Believe me, that is saying something. Both movies are just shy of ninety minutes long. Planes seems to last forever and is painfully boring. Lucy moves at a brisk (even jarring) clip and is always exciting. Honestly, I think I would have liked Guardians of the Galaxy even more than I did if I’d been forced to sit through Planes: Fire & Rescue first. Lucy asks a lot of direct questions about time and emphasizes its utility as a meaningful unit of measure, and I definitely watched with a heightened awareness of how differently ninety minutes can pass depending on what you choose to do with it.
The Good:
This movie makes a statement that surely everyone can acknowledge as true. If you suddenly find yourself using more of your brain capacity than any human ever has, and you’re in the unique predicament of suddenly being the smartest person who has ever lived on the planet, and you’re developing paranormal, god-like abilities, and yet, in spite of all this, you still have absolutely no idea what you should do, there is really only one person you can go to for advice about your problem—Morgan Freeman.
He is clearly the only choice in this situation. If movies have taught us nothing else, they’ve taught us that.
So this is perfect casting. And Freeman actually gets a pretty decent part, too. We could probably learn more about the background of his character, but since we don’t learn about the background of any of the other characters, and the story progresses so quickly, this is pretty forgivable.
Freeman is good in his part. I also really liked Amr Waked as Pierre Del Rio, Analeigh Tipton as Caroline, and particularly Min-sik Choi as Mr. Jang.
But the one who really stands apart here is Scarlett Johansson. The first half of the movie is so suspenseful. It wouldn’t be if Johansson couldn’t act. The interspersed bits of explanatory narration by Morgan Freeman are helpful intellectually. And the quick clips of wild animals are enough to make you feel pleased that you’re not watching The Counselor again. But the reason the movie succeeds is entirely Scarlett Johansson’s performance. Now don’t get me wrong. I’m a writer myself. I know a well written script is crucial and good direction matters, too. But an inadequate performance from a star expected to carry a film will ruin even the best script.
I never thought much of Johansson as an actress until really recently. I don’t mean that I didn’t like her, just that literally I did not think of her. She hardly made an impression on me. But I’ve started to like her a lot lately. She’s definitely come into her own as a leading lady, and now I find that even when I watch her earlier stuff (like Match Point) I like her performances better than I did originally.
My five-year-old is right, though. She was very captivating as The Black Widow in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and she’s phenomenal here. Her emotionally resonant performance, in fact, is almost entirely the reason that my five-year-old absolutely cannot see this movie.
For the first thirty minutes or so, Lucy is subjected to non-stop horrors, psychologically tortured, cut open and sewn up against her will, battered physically because she resists sexual abuse. And then things start getting really freaky.
The first twenty minutes of the movie could be accurately retitled Women Should Never Risk Doing Anything Ever Because it Could Always End in Their Rape and Murder.
What happens to Lucy makes her immediately sympathetic. It also has a pretty screamingly clear subtext, obsessed with emotionally charged issues like rape and women’s reproductive rights. She has a few drinks with a guy, and the next thing you know, she’s handcuffed to a briefcase despite her repeated protests and forced to do horrible things against her will.
Lucy is never stupid. Her “boyfriend” is like, “Here take this mysterious briefcase and deliver it for me, okay?” And she’s like, “No.” And then he’s like, “Don’t you trust me?” And she’s like, “No. I just met you.”
She never consents to doing these horribly ill-advised things. She does everything she can to resist. Later on, when she survives the first round of non-consensual horror, and the evil bad guy is like, “I want to offer you a job,” she again says, “No.”
But it doesn’t matter that she says no very clearly millions of times. Her body is useful to these people, and her will means nothing to them. Every time somebody tries to use her body for whatever self-serving reason, she always says no, very, very clearly. And every time she says, “No,” she is brutally punished for having a will and refusing to be accommodating.
In the beginning of the movie, as far as all these exploitative, self-interested men are concerned, she’s nothing more than a body. So it should be no surprise to anyone that later when her body is gone, they cannot see her and have no idea where she is or what has happened. To them, she’s only a body that can be used. In fact, to them, all human beings are only bodies that can be used. They’re concerned only with material gain. The movie has almost a gnostic sensibility in this way, but I don’t want to explain what I mean too clearly because it would involve spoilers.
The nature of the key substance being transported in the film fits in perfectly with this intensely charged subtext. All of these themes are terribly intriguing, but they’re the kind of thing that can’t be addressed in a review without spoiling the movie. Watch the movie, though, and I’m sure that afterwards you and friends can have a very fruitful discussion.
Despite all the horrible things that happen to this woman, though, it’s still really fun to watch her adventures. In fact, the second half of the film is not suspenseful or torturous at all. Luc Besson may have a weird fixation with powerful women being simultaneously helpless and tortured, but I’ll say this for him. He likes these women. His goal is not to torture them for sport. He always wants to empower them and let them win. As a woman, I honestly find that kind of refreshing.
Best Action Sequence:
As a rule, I don’t even like action, but I absolutely love the car chase through the streets of Paris. Because we’ve been led to sympathize with Scarlet Johansson’s character, and because Lucy seems now quite beyond pain, the whole thing feels bizarrely like a gleeful spree. And it’s really fun to watch the cars flying. Amr Waked makes a great straight man in these scenes, too. Lucy knows exactly why she needs him, and she’s right. The audience needs him, too. He’s very human and, hence, relatable.
I also like the first scene post-leakage when Lucy does that weird belt move with the guard.
Best Scene:
The part in the hospital operating room definitely gets your attention. Paul Chan is very good in a small role as the bewildered surgeon.
It’s not the best scene, but Lucy’s brief interaction with roommate Caroline (Annaleigh Tipton) is also a very engaging part of the story. Caroline’s oblivious detachment complements Lucy’s increasing detachment in a thought-provoking way that is also amusing to watch. Because the scene is mostly played for comedy, it’s also a nice break from the tension that has permeated up to that point. Honestly, after this scene that focuses on detachment, nothing is really nearly as intense ever again, so I think there’s something interesting going on here artistically, as well.
Funniest Moment:
Probably my favorite moment in the entire movie comes when the drug lord’s lackey protests that he tried to stop her but, “She’s a witch.” The drug lord has clearly been around the block. He’s insanely rich, and evil has been his business for so many years, that by now he’s seen it all.
Usually in movies when the henchman starts making pathetic, rushed excuses for failing because of an unexpected, unbelievable antagonist, his boss is like, “Shut up, you pathetic idiot!” And then he either kills the lackey or sends him back out shamed with one last chance to redeem himself.
But not this boss. The poor henchman guy whines, “She’s a witch,” and without missing a beat, without batting an eyelash, the drug lord unflinchingly acknowledges, “I know. I’ll kill her myself.”
There was something so absolutely, adorably crazy about that. I just loved it. I mean, he has seen her in action, so, of course, he does know. But he doesn’t even object to the notion that she’s a witch. Apparently, that seems like the most sensible explanation to him also. It makes you wonder just exactly what this guy has been through.
When I pointed this out to my husband, he observed, “Well, you don’t get to be kingpin of a Shanghai drug ring for nothing.” I guess.
This man, apparently, has faced down worse than witches in his long, gory rise to power. This kind of situation is just death and taxes to him. What a life he must have had up to this point! This character definitely needs his own spin-off origin story.
Best Scene Visually:
All the quick cuts of African animals are weird but not exactly bad. It’s kind of cute that Lucy is wearing a leopard print shirt. I kept thinking of the movie The Counselor and reflecting that while that film had a lot to say, this one is much more suited to being a movie (even if it is kind of weird).
To be honest, that car chase through Paris is probably my favorite scene on all levels, including visually. On the other hand, the scene in the airplane is the one I liked the least. Yet from a visual point of view, I must admit that what happens is quite arresting.
A couple of times, we get meaningful, lingering close-ups of Lucy’s face as she looks beyond our understanding and slowly cries. Luc Besson loves shots like this, and I’ll grant that they’re strangely satisfying to watch. To me, they seem very French, even though from what I understand, Besson is not exactly hailed as a genius in France.
The Negatives:
The ending is the biggest problem with this movie. In many ways, Lucy has the same problem as Prometheus. (Of course, as problems go, Prometheus has way more than one, but for the moment, I’m focusing on its unsatisfying ending.) After seeing Prometheus, people complained that the movie never really gave us the answers.
Well no kidding.
Sometimes I want to scream at people, “What answers do you expect?”
I know that $10-$15 is a lot to pay for a movie ticket. You’ve forked over a lot of cash, I get it. But do you really think that all of the mysteries of the cosmos will be presented to you in a succinct, easily digestible fashion at the end of a ninety minute summer movie?
At the end of this movie last night, several people in the auditorium with me burst out laughing derisively. I don’t see anything to laugh at myself.
The movie has a fairly orderly, logical conclusion. As my husband observed, Lucy seems to point out that the true answers to great mysteries like this are beyond human comprehension. Once you understand them, you will no longer be human. To me, that seems like enough of an answer for $10 to $15.
Honestly, I think Lucy is probably Besson’s best movie in an extremely long time, corny Sistine Chapel moment between Lucy and Lucy notwithstanding.
Overall:
I enjoyed watching Lucy more than I’ve enjoyed a movie for a very long time. Part of that sense of satisfaction may come from the fact that I went out of my way and took considerable trouble to see this movie, and then that inconvenience actually seemed worth it as I watched.
Though not perfect, Lucy is always entertaining, and Scarlet Johansson gives a great performance, start to finish. Yes sometimes the science gets more than a little vague, but in case you haven’t noticed, this is a Hollywood summer movie, not a lecture by an eminent scientist. If you want to learn all of the secrets of the universe and the mysteries of life, you should probably invest your time and energy in religion, philosophy, science, humanitarian work, your children, your passions, you know, wherever you find the most reward. Obviously a ninety minute movie is not going to give you all the answers. But Lucy raises a number of genuinely thought-provoking questions and consistently entertained me for ninety minutes. It also has plenty of well-choreographed fights and chase scenes that are easy and fun to watch. I’d watch this again gladly anytime. It’s definitely one of my favorite movies of the summer.
I think in the future, they should make a cross-over sequel where Lucy meets Samantha from Her. They realize how much they have in common and quickly form a friendship that soon devolves into intergalactic chaos. Either that or they team up to fight crime. On second thought, maybe making that movie would be a horrible, horrible mistake. Lucy’s good, though.