lucy_ver2I generally like Luc Besson movies — The Fifth Element, Leon: The Professional, La Femme Nikita. He writes some pretty interesting female characters who frequently have to fend for themselves in a very violent world. And that is just what the title character in his latest flick Lucy does. Played by Scarlett Johannsen, Lucy is an American student in Taipei who is forced to be a mule for a very interesting new designer drug, and then through a series of unfortunate events, pretty much all hell breaks loose as she turns into superhuman.

Lucy’s sketchy boyfriend takes her along to drop off a suitcase at a fancy hotel, but at the last minute handcuffs it to her, so she has to take it inside where she meets blood-covered sicko drug dealer Mr. Jang, and before you know it, she wakes up with a sore belly and finds that he sewed a bag of the new drug inside her and is expecting her and a couple of other unlucky foreigners to fly to Europe to deliver them to his people. And that would be bad enough, only the guys keeping her prisoner until the flight decide to rough her up a bit and end up breaking the bag inside her and the drugs go into her system and slowly turn her into Super Woman. She can hear everything everywhere, make people fly across the room, control communications and all sorts of other cool things, and all with just her newly enhanced brain. And with these new superpowers, she leaves her captors behind in a bloody heap. CT  CTH Lucy

And that’s where Morgan Freeman comes in. He’s the world’s Greatest Brain Scientist who lectures about how we only use 10% of our brains, but what if we could tap into more? So Lucy has to get to him because only he can understand what is happening to her. Fortunately he is in Paris, not Peoria. And at the same time Mr. Jang and his evil minions are hot on her tail, and Lucy teams up with a French cop to bring them down. There’s lots of blood and gunplay and kung fu and car chases, and not much plot development, but while you watching it moves along at a pretty fast clip.

If you’re looking for a scientifically accurate story, this one is definitely not for you. There are a lot of plot holes and loony leaps of logic, but if you just go with it, Scarlett is very easy to watch and the scenery is fun (Paris, Taipei). It isn’t deep but it is pretty entertaining. Lucy would make a great date movie or a fun rental/stream.

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