Movie review by Greg Carlson

Cockamamie, idiotic, and often fun, Luc Besson’s “Lucy” purees visuals from “2001: A Space Odyssey,” “Kill Bill,” “The Tree of Life,” “Only God Forgives,” and many other movies fancied by the filmmaker, including “Nikita,” “Leon,” and “The Fifth Element” from his own filmography. Many of Besson’s references appear courtesy of the director’s vigorous insertion of deliberately obvious, comically on-the-nose stock footage, a device far more entertaining than the cards announcing the ever-increasing cerebral capacity of the title character played by Scarlett Johansson, an involuntary drug mule who runs afoul of gangster Min-sik Choi and police officer Amr Waked after a bag of a crystalline synthetic called CPH4 leaks inside her abdomen and gives her godlike powers.

“Lucy” initiates a basic premise virtually identical to Neil Burger’s “Limitless,” the 2011 techno-thriller based on Alan Glynn’s “The Dark Fields,” in which Bradley Cooper attains superhuman abilities and enhanced brain function after gobbling a dangerous nootropic. In the two films, the pharmaceuticals operate as both MacGuffin and the fire of Prometheus, placing the protagonists in serious danger because of the gifts they unwrap. Another presumably coincidental similarity between the two stories is the side effect in which the irises of Cooper’s Eddie and Johansson’s Lucy transform into an even more electrifying shade of cerulean than naturally possessed by either actor.

Besson names his character after the 3.2 million year-old hominid, setting the table for all kinds of icebox talk on the text’s insight – or lack thereof – into race and gender. As sad as it is predictable, the protagonist is the only female with a significant speaking role. With “Lucy,” Johansson completes a strange trifecta of otherworldly characters coming into possession of knowledge that changes the way they relate to the world. In many aspects, Lucy’s intellectual progression mirrors the journey of discovery taken by self-aware operating system Samantha in Spike Jonze’s “Her,” but Lucy’s extermination of so many men also echoes the deadly alien in Jonathan Glazer’s “Under the Skin,” one of the year’s best films.

Given Besson’s reliance on the tired Hollywood reflexes that demand so much gunplay and a “Strong Female Character” in a world weirdly devoid of women, it would be more than a stretch to call “Lucy” a transhumanist statement. At least the presence of Morgan Freeman, playing his umpteenth variation on the sage scientist, is less distracting and ineffectual here than in the turkey “Transcendence,” another 2014 title trading on themes of futurism, intelligence beyond measure, the mind/body problem, and the fantasy of accelerated powers associated with higher consciousness.

What Besson misses most sorely is a genuine emotional interest in Lucy, along with a meaningful treatment of any turmoil she might be experiencing as a result of her rapidly expanding awareness. Besson vaguely alludes to the cost of CPH4, but mostly by way of an overly simplified application of the race against time plot used with much greater effect in “D.O.A.” and “Blade Runner.” Like Tyrell says of replicant Roy Batty, “The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long,” but Lucy isn’t allowed to share much if any of Roy’s capacity to appreciate life as we know it. Imagine how much more interesting “Lucy” might have been had Besson spent less time on the repetitive cycle of violent showdowns and carved out some room for Lucy to experience a more profound conflict akin to the experiences of HAL 9000 or Charlie Gordon in “Flowers for Algernon.”