ACTION; 1hr 29min
STARRING: Scarlett Johansson, Morgan Freeman
As if she isn’t genetically blessed already: Johansson
As Professor Samuel Norman in writer-director Luc Besson’s whirlwind thrill ride, Morgan Freeman, whose Papa Bear delivery could probably convince anyone of anything, declares that we human beings use a measly 10 per cent of our “cerebral capacity.” Egghead Norman also poses the no-brainer question of whether, acquisitive fools that we are, we’re “more concerned with having than being.” Hmm…
Lucy (Johansson) is about to become a living example of the wow in human know-how. Caught up in a Taipei drug deal, the otherwise (relatively) ordinary young woman is supernaturally re-charged when a pouch of synthetically manufactured pregnancy growth chemical, CPH4 — implanted in her stomach by a toxic Asian syndicate — ruptures and floods her system, blowing her jacked-up mind as her senses develop at a staggering rate. “I feel everything,” she says bewilderedly, and not in a smoochy Hallmark way.
Luc Besson (The Fifth Element) seizes the concept of excess knowledge as a mortal commodity and rocks out with it to the tune of trippy special effects, high-flying violence and insane stunt driving. A shape-shifting, inhumanly self-possessed ScarJo takes centre stage all the way: part sorceress, part unfathomable source and wholly turbulent soul.
