After her terrific performance as an artificially intelligent being in “Under the Skin,” Scarlett Johansson takes you to the world of sci-fi “Lucy,” an agreeably wild, non-stop thriller about being first human being to successfully harness 100% of her brainpower.
Story in Brief: Lucy is set in a world that is run by the mob, street gangs, drug addicts, and corrupt cops. Lucy (Scarlett Johansson), a woman living in Taipei, Taiwan, is forced to work as a drug mule for the mob. The drug implanted in her body inadvertently leaks into her system, changing her into a superhuman, due to accessing much more than the normal 10% of her brain capacity. She can absorb knowledge instantaneously, is able to move objects with her mind, and cannot feel pain and other discomforts.
The opening scene may lead you to believe it is not what one expects from the film that is touted as a Sci-Fi, but as the movie progress, it becomes unpredictable once a ruthless Korean crime boss named Mr. Jang (the splendidly villainous Choi Min-sik) comes on the screen soaked, and looking a blood thirsty man.
Caught into a situation she never imagined as a party girl studying in Taipei whose new boyfriend (Julian Rhind-Tutt) is involved in bad stuff in Choi web of things, Lucy gets terrified out of her mind, as she is forced to become a drug mule, with a bag containing a highly potent synthetic substance called CPH4 sewn into her stomach. But, in a matter of time, the bag bursts that not only helps miraculously survives the overdose, but also begins to experience some unseen, unfeeling, side effects.
Also, turns her brain more powerful, both in mind and power to do things that human brain cant do. In a matter of short time, she is suddenly able to access 20%, and then 30%, and so on — an unprecedented feat whose implications are unpacked at some length by the Paris-based researcher Professor Norman (Morgan Freeman).
Lucy’s transformation offer plenty of kicks and padded with emotions, touching moments: After making her unbelievable escape from Jang and his thugs. Lucy’s condition manifests itself step by step and speeds up to unimaginable speed, to the astonishment of everyone around her.
She turns into an expert assassin who quickly frees herself and turns the tables on her captors. Although she’s largely immune to pain, her powers of sensory perception reach superhuman levels. — a phenomenon visualized by Besson and his visual-effects team as an endless network of data streams, invisible to the naked eye.
The climax, lucy turns her power into sharing knowledge that human kind possible can do in future. What happens to her is something that remain a question.
The movie is worth a watch if you like fast paced action movie, just leave if you are expecting any story to back it up. It just races from beginning to end in a jiffy.