Wednesday 17 December 2014

Luc Besson's "Lucy"

A movie written and directed by Luc Besson, starring Scarlett Johansson, Morgan Freeman, and Min-sik Choi (from Oldboy, how could that not be great?

I don't know. But it's not.

It's a good idea, and it starts out well, but it just gets worse and worse as it goes along.

There are some fun moments (when Lucy is driving through Paris, for example) but they are few and far between.

Without wanting to spoil the story, there are parallels with "Limitless". But this is not nearly as good a movie. For one thing, when Bradley Cooper is enhanced in his movie, he is smart and charming. When Lucy is enhanced, she is cold, robotic and uninteresting.

I think there is supposed to be some kind of message in the movie. It finishes up with the line "Life was given to us a billion years ago, now you know what to do with it". To be honest, I have no idea!

In addition to Limitless, the movie also reminded me of 1963 movie "The Man with  the X-Ray Eyes" and 1960 movie "The Time Machine", 1968 movie "2001: A Space Odyssey", 1979 movie "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" and "The Matrix" movies.

IMDB scores it 6.5. Rotten Tomatoes scores it 66%. They're both being generous, IMHO.

Here's a still of Lucy just after she begins her transformation: