Director: Luc Besson
Cast: Scarlett Johansson, Morgan Freeman, Min-Sik Choi, Amr Waked, Julian Rhind-Tutt, Pilou Asbæk, Analeigh Tipton
Certificate: 15
Running Time: 89 minutes
Luc Besson is undoubtedly a very talented filmmaker, especially when it comes to serving up beautiful, entertaining (if sometimes slightly shallow) action films. The marketing machine for LUCY attempts very hard to make it seem like this is one of those films. A rather daft premise tacked on to spectacular visuals, a badass heroine, and imaginative set pieces. That is perhaps why it is so disappointing when you realise that Besson was not at all going for that this time, and instead tries to serve up something that might resemble a cross between LIMITLESS and 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY.
The emotional state of the audience closely mirrors that of the lead character’s as the film starts out tense and aggressive, but then grows more and more ponderous while losing any sense of emotion or pacing, just as Lucy herself grows more and more emotionally distant. It seems like Besson actually does not think that the whole thing is as silly as everyone else, and instead tries to get a philosophical debate going with an audience that one might suspect is neither expecting it nor really that bothered with having one. Even the few action sequences there are in the film (and most are actually covered in the trailers) are either mostly uninspired – like a Paris car chase, or incredibly dull and way too slow. Everything is inter-cut with shots of animals, nature, and space, as if the film is interrupted by a David Attenborough documentary, which rarely seems to work as intended.
Scarlett Johansson is not necessarily bad as she purposally sleep walks through the majority of the film, which while suiting the character fine, also creates a lack of empathy that is really hard to connect to. The audience feels her plight in the opening act of the film, but the more the character herself seems not to care about anyone or anything, neither do we.
The science in the film is pretty much as implausible as film science gets, which really strains the suspension of disbelief needed for the story to work on a larger level. If the film was going for full on entertainment, then that would not really be a problem, but as Luc Besson seems to ask everyone to slow down and think about the film with the film’s lack of pace, the film’s credibility disappears almost instantly, especially as the film builds to a ludicrous, almost 2001-ish ending that just does not work. The film fails to entertain, fails to make you think, or even to wow you with gorgeous imagery (some of the visual effects look rough and unpolished), so in the end you kind of have to ask what the whole point of it was.
[usr=1] LUCY is released on DVD and Blu-ray on 12th January.
