Aug 14, 2014 Film & TV
Directed by Luc Besson
At the beginning of Luc Besson’s stupidly fun Eurotrash schlockbuster, that very convincing press secretary from Borgen persuades Lucy (Scarlett Johansson) to take a suitcase to some guys for him. Next minute, she’s absolutely fucking terrified, as you would be if you were chained up by bloodthirsty Taiwanese mafia and had a bag of blue crystals sewn into you.
The bag leaks inside her around about the same time that Morgan Freeman tells a fusty lecture hall full of people that once you tap into more than 20 per cent of your brain capacity, you’re getting into “science fiction territory”. Thanks, exposition guy!
The blue crystals are in fact CPH4, a Besson-invented name for a substance produced by six-week-pregnant women in tiny quantities that has a powerful effect on babies’ growth. Next thing we know, Lucy has read the whole Internet and is able to pin guys to the ceiling using only her mind.
Lucy has a tad too much senseless violence, the science is all over the shop, and alongside many a homage to himself, Besson throws in Discovery Channel-style footage of animals in the wild, the Big Bang and other bonkers stuff. But he also gives us Egyptian hot stuff Amr Waked, who plays Paris police officer Captain Pierre Del Rio.
It’s Del Rio’s face at the end that says it all: was this a profound meditation on human existence or just the grandiose hallucinations of a woman jacked up on blue crystals?
