One star. Rated R, for strong violence, dramatic intensity and mild sensuality
By Derrick Bang
Goodness, what an abomination.
This ghastly excuse for a movie
blends the worst elements of spring’s Transcendence
and the loopy “Star Gate” sequence from 2001:
A Space Odyssey, with the “creation of the universe” nonsense from Tree of Life tossed in, for no
particular reason.
And you thought this was a
standard-issue revenge thriller? Think again.
French filmmaker Luc Besson is a
one-man movie machine, with more than 100 titles to his credit during the past
three decades: most as producer, but also quite a few as writer and/or
director. He’s best known for helming high-octane action epics such as La Femme Nikita and The Professional, and he also created Jason Statham’s enormously
popular Transporter series.
Besson’s hits have made pots of
money, which have allowed him the luxury of self-indulgent vanity projects such
as Angel-A and the children’s series
that began with Arthur and the Invisibles.
To put it kindly, such efforts have done little to burnish his reputation.
Lucy may tarnish it for several years. Not even
the promise of three more Transporter
entries is likely to compensate for this jaw-dropping example of pointless,
wretched excess.
Besson directed and takes sole
writing credit on this mess, so he deserves all the blame. And although
Universal’s marketing strategy suggests a Nikita-esque
thriller with Scarlett Johansson as the wronged, hard-charging protagonist,
that’s a serious mishandling of this film’s actual nature.
Veteran filmgoers will feel
nervous from the moments the lights dim, as we watch a CGI representation of
... cells dividing.
Say what?
Next up: a short prehistoric
visit with AL 288-1, the female Australopithecus
afarensis dubbed “Lucy” by anthropologists wise enough to recognize the
value of shorter headlines.
Say what what?
After which, finally, we launch
into what feels like familiar thriller territory, with an on-the-move
introduction to Lucy (Johansson), a carefree American student livin’ la vida loca in Taiwan. At the moment,
though, she’s wisely resisting a request by recent hook-up Richard (Pilou
Asbaek) to deliver a briefcase to unknown parties at a posh hotel. Alas, Lucy’s
self-preservational instincts aren’t fast enough to prevent Richard from
handcuffing the case to her wrist.
The only way to get it removed:
Hand it off to the enigmatic Mr. Jang (Min-sik Choi), clearly not a pleasant fellow. Although she survives this initial
encounter, Lucy then becomes an unwilling drug mule, with a plastic packet of a
designer drug surgically implanted below her stomach. She and three other
equally “conscripted” civilians will be sent to different Western European
countries, where they’ll be met by Mr. Jang’s colleagues, who’ll then remove
the packets and release the mules.
Uh-huh. Even Lucy isn’t naïve
enough to believe she’ll still be alive afterwards.
Unfortunately, despite
Johansson’s best efforts to sell this sequence — and she does paralyzed terror
better than most — the first act’s momentum is diminished by cross-cut scenes
of a university lecture delivered by Samuel Norman (Morgan Freeman), a
world-renowned expert on brain function. Dr. Norman explains, to an audience
far more rapt than we are, that human beings use a mere 10 percent of their
brain capacity; he then offers increasingly far-fetched theories about the
abilities accessible to an enhanced person able to channel 20 percent, 40
percent or even — cue gasps — 100 percent.
Now, Morgan Freeman is an
impressively talented actor, and I daresay he could deliver a scientific seminar
better than most college professors ... but a lecture is a lecture. Even with
Freeman at the dais, this said-bookism codswallop quickly grows tedious, not to
mention irritating, since we’d much rather see what the heck is gonna happen to
our terrified heroine.
Nothing good, of course. One
brutal beating later, the bag in Lucy’s stomach ruptures, filling her system
with little blue crystals of CPH4, which Besson imaginatively describes as (and
I’m quoting the press notes) a “natural substance that pregnant women produce
in the sixth week of natal development,” which “triggers” fetal mental and
physical growth.
Okay, sure; I’m willing to buy
that much. Sounds like a nifty way to explain Lucy’s transformation into a
vengeance-fueled avatar determined to repay Jang and his minions in kind,
right?
Oh, I wish.
Lucy’s senses, mental and
physical abilities get enhanced all right, and her initial actions are, indeed,
crowd-pleasingly cathartic. All too quickly, though, Besson’s story descends
into the hippy-trippy nonsense that similarly derailed Johnny Depp’s
“absorption” by mega-computer in Transcendence.
Everything turns into CGI lunacy, most notably the way Lucy eventually “bonds”
with a sizable server bank.
I mean, really: Our higher level
of evolution is to become gelatinous black tar?
Because that, ultimately, is the
point of Besson’s film; it’s why his heroine is named Lucy, and it’s also why
we’re initially introduced to her prehistoric namesake. Action thriller
trappings aside, this film was designed solely as a vehicle for Besson’s
condescending screed on how we human beings have wasted our lives and
potential, and how the world would be a far better place if we’d simply get a move on, and evolve into something
better.
These sermon-esque aspects of
Besson’s film are amplified by rat-a-tat, near-subliminal snapshot montages of
society’s successes and failures, delivered with the sort of pedantic, patronizing
tone that parents reserve for their misbehaving young children. Much of this supercilious
twaddle comes from Freeman’s Dr. Norman, but Lucy soon contributes some of her
own, even while dispatching bad guys by making them float to the ceiling: a
highly unsatisfying (and rather ridiculous) alternative to simply shooting
them, I might add.
All of which leads to the
inevitable realization, mildly promising premise aside, that this film is all
style and no substance. Worse yet, it’s preachy, self-righteous trash.
Not that Johansson deserves any
blame. She acts the hell out of her early scenes; we can’t help but feel Lucy’s
helpless, paralyzed dread, as she wonders what Jang, blood still dripping from
his previous encounter with some nameless victim, has in store for her. But
this isn’t even Johansson’s best scene; that comes later, post-enhancement,
when Lucy makes what she expects will be her final phone call, ever, to her
mother back home in the States. It’s a stunning moment.
Too bad Johansson is acting up a
storm in a vacuum.
Choi is appropriately nasty as
the loathsome Mr. Jang, and Nicolas Phongpheth displays similar menace as Jang’s
implacable lieutenant. Julian Rhind-Tutt delivers some mild comic relief as
Jang’s British colleague, who tells Lucy (and us) all about CPH4.
But Egyptian actor Amr Waked
hasn’t the faintest notion how to play Pierre Del Rio, the French police
officer Lucy decides to trust, as a conduit to locating the other three drug
mules. It’s hard to fault Waked; Besson leaves the role as little more than a
paper-thin cipher, a guy on hand merely to react to Lucy’s increasingly bizarre
powers.
Sigh.
As my Constant Companion has
observed with increasing frequency during recent years, the mere fact that
filmmakers can employ CGI as a means
to add masturbatory weirdness, doesn’t mean they should. Too many lazy directors — some of them fairly talented,
like Besson — are substituting visual excess for basic narrative.
To paraphrase a recent aphorism,
it is — and always has been — the story, stupid. Absent a plot and characters
that are even minimally sensible and interesting, you have nothing.
The best that can be said for Lucy is that editor Julien Rey does his job; at a brisk 90 minutes, the
torture concludes pretty quickly.
But you’ll still want those 90
minutes back.
1 comment:
Good review Derrick. It's short, nutty and a whole bunch of fun. Mostly because Besson seems to be back in his comfort-zone. For better, as well as for worse.
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