“Lucy,” directed, written and edited by Luc Besson is a film that came out earlier this summer, and is now showing at the Ashley Square Cinema.
The film, a French Sci-fi made great bounds at the box office on its release, beating out Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s “Hercules,” earning an astounding $17,088,110 on the opening weekend.
The story follows Scarlett Johansson’s character, Lucy, who is a happy-go-lucky girl that gets tricked into becoming a drug mule for her boyfriend.
This is where things start to get tricky and turn from a realist film to a complete science fiction.
A series of events lead to her having a bag of drugs sewn into her abdomen, but while there she is kicked in the stomach and the drugs leak into her blood stream.
This, in turn, unlocks parts of her brain that have yet to be discovered, giving her powers such as telekinesis, telepathy, mental time travel, as well as other various skills.
Her new abilities cause her to change and she kills many people around her, eventually discovering the locations of three other drug mules with the drugs sewn in them as well.
All the while Morgan Freeman’s character is basically narrating the plot and keeping the viewer in on important lines they may have missed.
At this point the film turns more into a video game feel, as Lucy seeks the remaining three drugs, with the reason basically unknown to the viewer. It feels more like the hero in a game who must travel from island to island looking for some kind of gem instead of a movie.
The entire film is chocked full of action and graphics, but aside from that the plot has many holes and is very hard to believe.
What saves it is Scarlett Johansson’s performance. Her ability to basically play two completely different characters from the start of the film to the end is breathlessly executed and fun to watch.
All of the action reminded me of a Michael Bay film, except that the plot was actually new and felt fresh, not just robots fighting each other and breaking buildings.
Make sure, however, that you don’t go into the theater expecting a realistic or even semi-realistic science fiction.
The plot quickly turns very unbelievable and has many pointless fight scenes with guns, which seem very unrealistic since Lucy can kill multiple people with just a snap of her finger.
The ending is extremely unique to put it nicely. It takes a completely different turn than expected, but ends up feeling more like you just watched an entire movie just to have a message on the meaning of life shoved down your throat.
I would not recommend seeing the film if you were to pay for it, however since it is free to DePauw students I would say it would be worth the trip to Ashley Square if you were looking for something to do.
The film came out earlier this summer but just began playing here in Greencastle this past week.