Lucy:
In Taiwan, Lucy, a foreign exchange student, is living with her friends and new boyfriend Richard. Richard convinces her to deliver a briefcase to some clients for him, and succeeds in convincing her. Unfortunately, the deal goes sour: they are betrayed, Richard is killed, and Lucy is kidnapped by Korean gangster led by the intimidating Mr. Jang. Jang has her knocked out and has the contents of the briefcase (a bag of purple/blue powder) surgically put inside her, making her an unwilling drug mule. The bag breaks inside her, spreading this new drug throughout her blood stream, allowing her to access more than 10% of her brain, which leads her to get amazing powers, and she pursues revenge while also finding a way to cure herself of this affliction.
Scarlett Johansson uses her charm and experience as Black Widow in Marvel movies to pull off the role of the bad-ass and stone-cold Lucy. The movie relies a lot on her, and she pulls off the role well. Morgan Freeman, while a great actor, is just sort of there for more star power in this movie. Choi Min-Sik is a threatening, if slightly over-the-top bad guy as Jang. Amr Waked (Syriana, Contagion, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen) has a supporting role as bad-ass cop Del Rio, who allies with Lucy to take out Jang. Pilou Asbaek, Mason Lee (Ang Lee's son), Analeigh Tipton, and Frederic Chou fill out the rest of the cast, and all do fairly well in their small roles.
The movie is a little too short, but it has a unique style (the opening sequence uses symbolic shots of animals) and some cool themes (such as the continuing motif of human evolution, even the name Lucy is related to evolution, but I won't give away how). Although it's a bit silly towards the end, and a lot of the characters are under-developed, I think it's a fun action movie and shows Besson still has some cool ideas. This movie has a different feel to it than his previous efforts (like Leon: The Professional or The Fifth Element), which makes it slightly refreshing.
The film also has a cool synthesizer score by Eric Serra, and an original song ("Sister Rust") over the credits by Damon Albarn of Blur and Gorillaz fame.
My main complaint is that the movie's ending is rushed and sloppy, and is under-explained, as if Besson couldn't figure out how to properly end it and decided just to sort of leave it open-ended, which results in a feeling of disappointment.
Lucy may be a bit laughable at times, and be slightly under-developed, but Johansson's lead role, the unique premise, and cool soundtrack make it worth watching at least once, even if you wait for the DVD. 3/5 stars.
(Image: Wikipedia)
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