The drug gives her extraordinary mental and physical powers, including telekinesis and Jedi mind-tricks. She uses her new powers to exact revenge on the Korean criminals, led by Mr. Jang (Min-sik Choi), who forced her to become their drug mule.
She tracks down the world expert on brain enhancement - Professor Norman (Morgan Freeman) - in Paris, and arranges for the French police to intercept the other drug mules and bring their packets of drugs to Paris. This is because she needs more of the drugs to further enhance her powers.
Mr. Jang comes to Paris and a massive fight breaks out between his thugs, Lucy, and the Paris police.
***
Lucy is an odd mix of action-adventure, noir (doomed, poisoned protagonist) and science fiction. It's entertaining enough but is technically unconvincing, causing writer/director Luc Besson's reach to exceed his grasp.
At least with Luc Besson, you know that you're not going to get some unoriginal run-of-the-mill by-the-numbers actioneer.
The movie starts off promisingly enough. Luc Besson has always been good with introductions and this one is a doozy. I won't spoil it for you by revealing any details here.
However it begins to go off the rails when Lucy magically develops superpowers such as telekinesis, and medical diagnosis skills out of thin air (she doesn't do any reading or research before being able to diagnose a terminal patient from his x-rays alone).
Verisimilitude and the voluntary suspension of disbelief, are critical for getting the audience to buy into a story. Luc Besson usually aces it but he should stay away from science fiction (Fifth Element was science fantasy). He does not have the technical judgment to pull it off.
But wait, there's more! Lucy conveniently leaves the bad guys alive after disabling them, so that they can stick around for the final confrontation. It's not like she is squeamish about killing. She cold-bloodedly kills the Chinese criminals who held her captive.
So there goes the remaining bits of the audience's voluntary suspension of disbelief. And to make sure it is fully gone, Luc Besson stomps on it even more. Lucy can control people's mind, like a Jedi, but doesn't use it to disable the bad guys (don't give me that only works on the weak-minded crap). She can also telepathically knock them unconscious, levitate them in the air, but she doesn't lift a finger to help the police who are protecting her from the bad guys. So there's a massive gunfight at the end of the movie, which she could have easily won single-handedly.
And to top it all off, the movie's basic premise, that humans use only 10 percent of their brain, is flat out wrong. There are other objections - the fossil Lucy was not the world's first woman, only the earliest known fossil - but I don't want to go on like some geek. (Lucy sees radio waves, and can send TV signals from Taipei to Paris using her brainpower alone.)
Stylistically, the movie is flawed too. The cuts to documentary footage (we see a cheetah stalking its prey when Lucy is being cornered by the bad guys) are clunky and throw you out of the movie.
In other visuals, Luc Besson seems to being paying homages to Akira (organic quick-grow tentacles), The Time Machine (it's obvious when you see it), Kick-Ass (camera work showing the armed thugs in the passageway), The Matrix (white room), and I-kid-you-not Star Wars (bad guy shoots at Lucy but she disappears, leaving her empty clothes behind). Heck, I'd even throw 2001: A Space Odyssey into the mix (evolution of man into a super being). It's all very distracting.
All in all, I'd consider this an honorable failure.
lucy sux
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