Lucy (2014)
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Critics Consensus: Enthusiastic and silly, Lucy powers through the movie's logic gaps with cheesy thrills plus Scarlett Johansson's charm -- and mostly succeeds at it.
Critics Consensus: Enthusiastic and silly, Lucy powers through the movie's logic gaps with cheesy thrills plus Scarlett Johansson's charm -- and mostly succeeds at it.
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From La Femme Nikita and The Professional to The Fifth Element, writer/director Luc Besson has created some of the toughest, most memorable female action heroes in cinematic history. Now, Besson directs Scarlett Johansson in Lucy, an action-thriller that tracks a woman accidentally caught in a dark deal who turns the tables on her captors and transforms into a merciless warrior evolved beyond human logic. (C) Universal- Rating:
- R (for strong violence, disturbing images, and sexuality)
- Genre:
- Action & Adventure
- Directed By:
- Luc Besson
- Written By:
- Luc Besson
- In Theaters:
- Jul 25, 2014 Wide
- US Box Office:
- $126.4M
Cast
-
Min-sik Choi
as Mr. Jang -
Pilou Asbaek
as Richard -
Scarlett Johansson
as Lucy -
Morgan Freeman
as Professor Norman -
Amr Waked
as Pierre Del Rio -
Julian Rhind-Tutt
as The Limey
Related News & Features
-
Luc Besson Has No Plans for a Lucy Sequel
– Hollywood Reporter
-
Box Office Guru Wrapup: Lucy's Brains Beat Hercules' Brawn
– Rotten Tomatoes
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Critic Reviews for Lucy
All Critics (193) | Top Critics (41) | Fresh (127) | Rotten (66)
Lucy is not about to win any prizes from Mensa ... but this isn't quite like any other blockbuster you'll see this year.
No one has ever accused French action director Luc Besson of thinking too hard, and this frantic exercise in pseudoscience and goofball metaphysics is best enjoyed by following his lead.
Part philosophical/scientific treatise, part action movie, a film that goes from mayhem to boredom in a heartbeat.
Besson has made very, very bad films in the past, but this is the first time he has presented one so idiotic that the only way to properly convey its flaws is to enumerate them.
Scarlett Johansson carries the film effortlessly, bridging Besson's narrative and logical ellipses by fully embracing his crowd-pleasing intentions and convincingly depicting Lucy's psychological transformation.
This movie worries that humanity is wasting its potential, which is a bizarre fear for a movie that has this many nonsensical shootouts. But that's what on Besson's mind: the Big Bang and bang-bang.
Faster than the speed of light, Lucy is certainly the best film I've seen this summer.
Smartly conceived, "Lucy" is one of those great "what if" films you occasionally stumble across that has you thinking long after it's ended.
Lucy is more of the same mostly nonsensical gibberish we've come to expect from Late Period Besson (TAKEN 2!).
Built on an erroneous premise, "Lucy" is a creative, but hollow film that tries too hard for success.
Besson's most ambitious realization of his peculiarly exuberant notion of girl power.
Lucy is a barnstorming, breakneck bullsh**fest; a dummy stuffed with pseudoscience. It's also the most entertaining film Besson's made in years.
[A] supremely silly and pleasurable action movie.
Lucy is just a film that takes an intriguing (albeit absurd) narrative, and builds a world around it that is easy to get lost within.
A fast-paced sci-fi thriller that combines action-packed set-pieces with philosophical looks at the nature of humanity.
Luc Besson gleefully combines two of his favourite movie elements - fit women and wildly insane action - in this raucous guilty pleasure.
Rollickingly entertaining - up to a point.
A dizzyingly silly, extravagantly enjoyable sci-fi thriller.
"Lucy" is all math: one beautiful superstar (a game Scarlett Johansson), one Morgan Freeman (Morgan Freeman), a chase, some fights, superpowers, a brief moment of transcendence, gorgeous colors, all wrapped up in an 80-minute bow.
Lucy is a brash, breezy and breathlessly paced thriller, with a high-concept plot that falls apart the moment you start thinking about it. But Besson's camera moves so fast that you rarely get the chance.
It would be overstating it to suggest that Besson is enjoying a major creative renaissance but Lucy is the best film he has made in a very long time.
The movie's title character may find her brainpower increasing as the running time counts down; chances are you'll feel like your own IQ levels are dropping just as rapidly as you watch it.
In this pile of adolescent heavy-metal-deep pseudo-sci-fi philosophy, the meaning of humanity (or lack thereof) depends on how "cool" something looks onscreen.
Lucy is a stupendously effective exercise in high-end misdirection.
French writer/director Luc Besson has created a cottage industry of female action heroines with big guns and small skirts.
Besson is a keen pilferer of anything that's looked good in other people's movies.
Audience Reviews for Lucy
The fun of the first minutes is steadily diluted in an action hodgepodge with bastardized and incongruent philosophical matters. I used to like Besson when he could do straight to business, hard-edged action with a bit of tongue-in-cheek humour, instead of pretentious 2001/matrix/flowers for algernon-like bullshit.
MoreSuper Reviewer
If you're looking for one of the more fun summer movies that have no intention of taking itself seriously at all, might I suggest Lucy, which is one part superhero origin tale and one part wonky French existential drama. It starts off quickly, with the titular character being forced into a being a drug mule. The substance is breaks in her bloodstream and the concoction transforms her from meek to a kickass vigilante of science. Lucy can now access far more of her brain's potential, not just that meager 10 percent we plebs utilize, and who knew that we could all be superheroes if we really put our minds to it? Despite the presence of Morgan Freeman as really a talking head to let us know about the potential of the human brain, none of this really makes any sense, and thankfully the movie doesn't pretend that it should. Lucy literally gains a new superpower every time we see her, from telekinesis to manipulating radio waves to eventual manipulation of matter and time travel. Yeah, it gets weird, but thankfully it's also relatively entertaining, funny, fun, and short and sweet at a briskly efficient 90 minutes. The plot doesn't exactly fell fully developed, more a gallop between events as we charge up the percentages from 10 to 20 to 30 percent, and so on. The criminals don't seem like much of a threat despite their numbers. I'm shocked nobody assessed what happened to Lucy and said, "Hey, maybe I should ingest this drug into my bloodstream and become a superhero too." While the action is well orchestrated, there is less of it than advertised, as Lucy spends a good amount of time adjusting to her new self-actualized human superiority, played by a detached yet amusing Johansson. I can't even explain the bonkers ending except to note that maybe there's a very good reason why human beings were not capable of using a maximum percentage of their brain's capacity. It doesn't make much sense but it's pretty, entertaining with its messiness, and short enough not to waste your precious time.
Nate's Grade: B
Super Reviewer
A female version of Limitless but equally doesn't hold much substance! Doesn't offer much and equally doesn't deliver much!
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Super Reviewer
Super Reviewer
Lucy Quotes
- Professor Norman:
- Imagine if we could access to 100%.
- Professor Norman:
- 100 billion neurons per human, of which only 50 percent are activated. There are more connections in the human body than there are stars in the galaxy. We possess a gigantic network of information to which we have almost no access.
- Lucy:
- Life was given to us a billion years ago, and now you know what to do with it.
- Professor Norman:
- 100 billion neurons per human, of which only 50 percent are activated. There are more connections in the human body than there are stars in the galaxy. We possess a gigantic network of information to which we have almost no access.
- Lucy:
- Life was given to us a billion years ago. Now you know what to do with it.
- Mr. Jang:
- Ouch! Oooh. Yow! Hey! Why you stick me with knives?!
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