Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 62% (Critics) / 48% (Audience)
Directed By: Luc Besson
Written By: Luc Besson
Starring: Scarlett Johansson, Morgan Freeman, Min-sik Choi and Amr Waked
Studio: Universal Pictures
Synopsis:From La Femme Nikita and The Professional to The Fifth Element, writer/director Luc Besson has created some of the toughest, most memorable female action heroes in cinematic history. Now, Besson directs Scarlett Johansson in Lucy, an action-thriller that tracks a woman accidentally caught in a dark deal who turns the tables on her captors and transforms into a merciless warrior evolved beyond human logic. – (Source)

The Good:
Min-sik Choi is a wonderfully brutish presence as the bloodthirsty drug kingpin Jang. Every scene he is in is full of a really great manic energy that this movie could have definitely used more of.
There was also a really cool Parisian car chase that called to mind some of Luc Besson’s best moments as a director.

The Bad:
This movie makes no sense. Besson has an idea that he seemed incapable of turning into a cohesive movie. He seemed to be attempting to make this deep, navel gazing, meta-physical treatise on the folly of man and how we have wasted our time as the top of the food chain but at the same time he inserts so much violence into it for no real reason. I guess tapping into the other 90% of your brain turns you into a violent douche. And while I welcomed the shoot outs, they were not very interesting. To be honest nearly all of the action set pieces were ho-hum. He tried to make a thinking man’s action movie and ended up just making a boring action movie instead.
And bored summed up the performances of Johannson and Freeman too. Freeman was all exposition all the time and Johannson, in an attempt to portray someone whose humanity was slipping away, just came across as disinterested.

The Ugly:
What the hell was up with all the cut aways to stock footage? There was so much stock footage in this movie. And it was all used in the most heavy-handed and obvious way too. Lucy about to be set upon by a gang of enforcers was intercut with stock footage from Natural Geographic of an impala being stalked by a cheetah. Yeah, it was as ridiculous as it sounds.

Final Verdict: An aimlessly pointless movie that I am sure made sense in Luc Besson’s head when he wrote it but he failed in translating those ideas to the screen. Coupled with a lackluster acting decisions by Johannsen and Freeman and all LUCY has going for it is the pretty nifty car chase through Paris and a delightfully maniacal performance by Min-sik Choi.

Grade: D+