BELSER MOVIE REVIEWS: “LUCY”( Spoiler-Free).
What's up, peoples? It's your boi " The Belser", back with "that hot jive on the movie side "once again to give you guys and gals here at Comicbookmovie.com. Just finished up this flick and the word that comes to mind is…..different. It’s a very VERY different type of movie.
HERE’S THE STORY:
Lucy (Scarlett Johansson) is a young party chick living in Taipei, Taiwan. Through a messed up set of circumstances, she is forced to be a drug mule(smuggling drugs inside her body) for what appears to be the Chinese mob. The drug inside her is highly experimental and starts to leaks into her system. As a result, she’s allowed to use more than the 10% of the "normal" human brain's capacity and she starts changing into something else. She can absorb multiple lines of information, move objects with her mind, feels no pain and her abilities become more advanced as the drug continues to course through her system. She sets out to find a famous scientist ( Morgan Freeman) whose life work is basically about what’s happening to Lucy. While evading the mobsters that want the drug back, the two try to mutually help each other( her with a new purpose and him with his research) before she reaches 100% capacity.
ACTING:
I think Scarlett Johansson does a very good job in this movie. She ranges from a typical scared party chick to an almost robotic cadence as she gains higher control. Morgan Freeman is , of course, Morgan Freeman. So he gives a good but typical performance. The rest of the supporting cast is acceptable but no one stands out.
WRITING AND DIRECTION:
Now I'm a fan of Luc Besson’ s work ( my favorite being THE FIFTH ELEMENT with BRUCE WILLIS). This is pretty unique. The writing has the usual action movie one-liners but there is also a lot of theoretical and existential jargon. Mainly about the extent of human knowledge and the measurement of time and space. There is also a lot of inserts of random things to illustrate the speaker's point throughout the movie. It reminded me a lot of the William Hurt movie ALTERED STATES from the 80’s and LIMITLESS with Bradley Cooper.
SPECIAL EFFECTS AND CINEMATOGRAPHY:
I will say that the special effects are amazing. The best example are as Lucy’s world view as her powers progress ( She sees the energy of everything, etc ). The detail and the scope of the world view they use is a sight to behold.The cinematography during the action scenes ( in particular during a car chase in Paris) is fast-paced and will have on the edge of your seat. This guy did THE TRANSPORTER 2 and TAKEN 2 so he knows a lil’ something about action.
OVERALL:
This is a “out of the box” type of film. Because of that, I can see some of the dialogue of this movie going over people’s heads. Of course, the natural reaction to that by the normal movie is to say “ I hate this because I don’t understand it”. I’m not gonna say it’s the best movie ever but I would watch it again. For that , it GETS the Belser Seal of Approval.
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