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France, Taiwan, Germany · 2014
Rated R · 1h 29m
Director Luc Besson
Starring Scarlett Johansson, Morgan Freeman, Choi Min-sik, Amr Waked
Genre Action, Science Fiction
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An American woman gets kidnapped in Taiwan and forced into service as a drug mule. But the tables are turned – and then some – when she accidentally absorbs some of the experimental synthetic hormone that she’s carrying, allowing her to transcend her physical, intellectual and perceptual limitations.
Slant Magazine by Abhimanyu Das
Vulgar auteurist Luc Besson finally commits wholeheartedly to his decades-long preoccupation with waifish young women discovering their inner Shiva, spinning the concept out to its most delirious possible extremes.
Lucy is a confounding experience, but at a brisk 85 or so minutes, it manages not to outstay its welcome. Those not enamored of Besson's particular brand of Euro-schlock grindhouse existentialism, however, may find their brains more stimulated elsewhere.
There are moments of real wonder and even beauty amidst the slam and the bang and the big bada boom, and while Lucy is a mixed bag, it's been mixed by a master, and it is delightfully, happily insane.
Lucy doesn't hold together, but with its flashy innovation, Besson's trying to freshen the formula. It's the kind of freewheeling mess of a movie you wish studios would try out more often.
It's basically the perfect summer movie, because it's designed to be.
The Hollywood Reporter by John DeFore
Lucy plays more like a big dumb superhero flick than sci-fi.
The Guardian by Jordan Hoffman
The end of the movie goes completely off the rails, but in a way that is charming in its stupidity.
Giddily recycling everything from “2001: A Space Odyssey” and “The Matrix” to yakuza actioners and National Geographic documentaries, it’s a garish, trippy, wildly uneven and finally quite disarming piece of work, graced by a moment-to-moment unpredictability.
Even Besson’s most bold choices – and this is a film that goes weird, and then just keeps getting weirder – don’t seem so revolutionary when packaged in such well-tread trappings and increasingly shoddy writing.
McClatchy-Tribune News Service by Roger Moore
Besson’s script may let her (and Freeman) down in the third act, but the 89 minute long Lucy is so brisk it’ll give you whiplash. Even marginal thrillers benefit from a director and star who have a sense of urgency and are as hellbent as this on not overstaying their welcome.
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