Lucy (2014 film)

Lucy
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Luc Besson
Written by	Luc Besson
Produced by	Virginie Silla
Starring	Scarlett Johansson Morgan Freeman Amr Waked Choi Min-sik
Cinematography	Thierry Arbogast
Edited by	Luc Besson
Music by	Éric Serra
Production company	EuropaCorp
Distributed by	Universal Pictures
Release dates	25 July 2014 (2014-07-25) (United States) 6 August 2014 (2014-08-06) (France)
Running time	89 minutes
Countries	France United States
Language	English
Budget	$40 million

Lucy is a 2014 French-American action film directed, written and edited by Luc Besson, and produced by Besson and Europacorp. It was released on July 25, 2014. The film was shot in Taipei, Paris and New York City. It stars Scarlett Johansson as the title character, along with Morgan Freeman playing Professor Norman.

Plot

In a world run by the mob, street gangs, drug addicts, and corrupt cops, Lucy (Scarlett Johansson) is a woman living in Taipei, Taiwan who is forced to work as a drug mule for the mob. A drug implanted in her body inadvertently leaks into her system, which allows her to use more than the normal 10% of her brain's capacity, thus changing her into a superhuman. As a result, she can absorb information instantaneously, is able to move objects with her mind, and can choose not to feel pain or other discomforts, in addition to other abilities.

Cast

• Scarlett Johansson as Lucy, a drug mule who is injected with a drug that enhances her abilities
• Morgan Freeman as Professor Samuel Norman
• Choi Min-sik as Kang
• Amr Waked as a French policeman
• Pilou Asbaek
• Mason Lee
• Analeigh Tipton
• Frédéric Chau
• Claire Tran
• Christophe Tek
• Jan Oliver Schroeder
• Yvonne Gradelet
• Paul Chan
• Michél Raingeval

Production

Filming started in September 2013 at the Cité du Cinéma, a new megastudio located on the outskirts of Paris. According to EuropaCorp CEO Christophe Lambert, this film had the highest budget in the company's history. He also stated that Luc Besson had never put so many special effects into a movie. On 5 September 2013, scenes were shot at the cliffs of Étretat in northern France.

Filming in Taipei, Taiwan, began on October 21, 2013 and lasted for 11 days. One of the locations filmed at was Taipei 101, one of the world's tallest skyscrapers. Select footage was filmed with IMAX cameras.

On October 23, The Hollywood Reporter stated that Besson had become enraged by all the media attention the shoot was getting that day. Rumors circulated that Besson was so frustrated with the constant disruptions that he considered leaving Taipei to film elsewhere. Meeting reporters in Taipei a day after he finished shooting the Taiwan part of the film, Besson blasted the media. "We don't want pictures with new dresses of Scarlett," he said. "Sometime [sic] I lost a bit of my concentration because I'm bothered by that." Because of constant paparazzi intrusions he said that "shooting at night time was a nightmare". Besson singled out two unnamed agencies from Hong Kong for special condemnation. News reports emerged that he wanted to leave Taiwan early to register his disapproval of their actions, but Besson labelled these as incorrect.

Release

On April 2, 2014, the first trailer for Lucy was released. A behind the scenes preview of the film was released on July 10. On July 25, 2014, the film opened at 3,172 theaters in the United States.

Critical response

On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a score of 63 percent, based on 99 reviews, with a rating average of 6.1 out of 10. The site's critical consensus reads: "Enthusiastically silly, Lucy tries to power through its logical gaps with cheesy thrills and Scarlett Johansson's charm – and partly succeeds." On Metacritic, the film has a rating score of 59 out of 100, based on 36 reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews."

Justin Chang of Variety called Lucy "a slickly engineered showcase for a kickass heroine whom we instinctively, unhesitatingly root for" and an enjoyable, "agreeably goofy, high-concept" speculative narrative devoid of self-importance because "it pays deft, knowing homage to any number of Hollywood sci-fi head-trip classics, embedding its ideas in a dense labyrinth of cinematic references that somehow end up feeling sly rather than shopworn." Jordan Hoffman of The Guardian called the film "mindless and mixed up, but propulsive and fun" and added that "Scarlett Johansson shines in this pseudo-intellectual action flick that represents Luc Besson's finest work" since the film The Fifth Element; he gave Lucy 3/5 stars, while IGN's Jim Vejvoda rated the film a 7.2 and said "this movie is all about Johansson, who's in almost every scene. She ably plays the title character as she transforms from average person to omnipotent entity" and "ultimately, more of Lucy works than doesn't. It's a fun movie even if its 'science' more than strains suspension of disbelief. It's a credit to Besson's style and Johansson's performance that Lucy isn't a train wreck." The San Francisco Chronicle's Mick LaSalle said, "You can scoff at Besson's philosophies and hypotheses, but to do that would miss what's in front of you. Lucy is an impeccably realized vision of Besson's view of things."

By contrast, John DeFore of The Hollywood Reporter stated that "plenty of films and novels have envisioned what would happen if we gained conscious control over our entire brain," but that "it's hard to recall one whose ideas were more laughable than this one." He stated that the audience may "roll with the film" as Lucy does things beyond human capability, but that the film does not justify "Lucy's increasingly godlike abilities, which soon include time travel and levitation. Every now and then, a nugget of real philosophy is dropped into the screenplay, but it's surrounded by so much blather that even a generous viewer has trouble using it to justify what Lucy experiences." Writing for LA Weekly, Amy Nicholson stated that Besson "must think the audience is operating with even fewer synapses [than the capacity of ten percent]. Here, his style is slick but hand-holdingly literal" and "as the newly bionic Lucy seeks vengeance, Besson even tries to convince us she's a strong female character, which to the majority of male action directors simply means a sexy, silent badass. The real females in the audience may wonder why a genius would limp across a multi-continental gunfight in five-inch Louboutins."

Among the film's main criticisms are the ten percent of brain myth and Lucy's invincibility. Ralph Blackburn of Belfast Telegraph called the notion of only using ten percent of the brain an "often-quoted idea" that "has obvious Hollywood potential," but, according to leading neuroscientists, is "nothing more than an urban myth." He cited neuropsychology professor Barbara Sahakian, quoting that "it's impossible to work out how much of our brain we are using quantitatively. However, it is definitely much more than 10 per cent." Chang stated that because Besson "seems more interested in engaging, playfully yet seriously, with the various biological, philosophical and metaphysical riddles that [the film] raises," the story is lacking as an action film and is not "much of a thriller – it's virtually an anti-thriller, devoid of suspense or any real sense of danger due to the fact that its heroine is more or less invincible," and that "at times it's hard to shake the sense that a smarter, more unbridled picture might have found a way to slip the bonds of genre altogether." Like Chang, DeFore felt that one of the flaws with the film is Lucy's invincibility because it "nullifies much of the drama to come." Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune said that the first twenty minutes of the film are good, but that by half an hour of runtime, the audience will realize that Lucy has no limits, which makes the film dull after a while with a "limited payoff". The Boston Globe's Ty Burr, on the other hand, stated of the criticisms: "who comes to a Besson movie seeking logic? Lucy stays true to its own invented physics."

Lucy has been compared to various films, including 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Matrix, The Tree of Life, Transcendence,Akira (film) and especially Limitless. Chang said, "Lucy's gradual rise to omniscience and omnipotence recalls Neo's own such journey in The Matrix, while her many black-suited Korean opponents suggest another army of Agent Smiths...And in those moments when Lucy uploads herself, Big Brother-style, to every computer and TV screen in the vicinity." Hoffman said, "The end of the movie goes completely off the rails, but in a way that is charming in its stupidity. It's like 2001: A Space Odyssey for those with short attention spans, and those people need to have their minds blown, too, I suppose." Matt Prigge of Metro New York, while calling the film "stupid, smart and awesome," stated that it "smartly goes in a wildly different direction than the amusingly amoral Limitless, in which Bradley Cooper's character abused a similar drug, but used it to gain success, money and power. He was selfish. Lucy is selfless. At first she has super-clarity. Then she has super-brain power." Prigge added that "Lucy is Limitless, it's Limitless with more than a dash of The Tree of Life, and even a bit" of the film Under the Skin, which also stars Johansson. Burr commented that "where a fully juiced cerebellum just made Cooper's character really, really capable, Lucy undergoes a metaphysical makeover that, by the film's midpoint, has started to rearrange time, space, and her body."

See also

• Transhumanism in fiction

External links

• Official website
• Lucy at IMDb