Lucy

Leon.

Because of Leon, Luc Besson gets a Free Pass for pretty much anything. (I mean cinematically of course). He's a triple threat - a writer, producer and director. He wrote and produced The Transporter. (Who doesn't love The Stath?). But then also Transporter 2 & 3, the continuation of a single idea stretched far too thin. (And now 4 & 5). He wrote and produced Taken, an unrepentant, brutal European revenge and rescue thriller. But also Taken 2 & 3, the dampest of squibs, the most artificially flavoured of movies. Arthur and the Invisibles trilogy (trilogy!), Taxi 1-4, Brick Mansions! (only a writing credit or we could be in trouble). However - FREE PASS! All is forgiven Luc, you gave us Leon! No worries.

But then Lucy. And frankly, I want my money back.

I don't just mean I'm taking back my Free Pass, I want recompence. To define what makes Lucy so terrible is to define 0 on a scale of 1-10. So lets dive in and dissect this beast, as it's already been killed and butchered by the people who made it.

Actually lets take a quick breath and look at what went right (not enough to even get it to 1 out of 10) Scarlett Johansson does her very best to wrestle some semblance of a human being out of her character (ironically, considering Plot Point - she becomes a hyper human. Or a robot) and, in fairness, it's very sleekly shot. And it's short.

And thats it. So...let's start at the very beginning. After the most preposterous start - a voiceover that states "life was given to us a billion years ago. What have we done with it?" and then waster Lucy (ScarJo) and her waster 10-Day boyfriend (It Doesn't Matter) end up outside a large building after an all-night party and he handcuffs a briefcase to her and tells her to take it in for $500 - Lucy goes inside, realises it's a bad idea and while trying to escape 10-Day paints the doors with his insides courtesy of a semi-automatic rifle. Lucy gets taken up to a top floor hotel suite where a number of Asian men (undefined nationality - Min-sik Choi, head baddie, is Korean, so I guess they're going for korean) shepherd her to a desk and after shooting a number of people in the head, force her to watch as the briefcase's blue crystal contents are forced into a half-dead drug addict before making smash with his brains.

It sounds interesting enough. It's not. Many parts of this scenario are preposterous - Choi kills wearing protective gloves and shoes, yet splattering blood over clothes, floors, furniture AND HIS FACE and not giving a damn. I call this scene Anger & Fear, as Choi is angry and Lucy is scared. Nobody shows any discernible depth and the Asian baddie crew might as well be manequins with guns they're so motionless and emotionless. And as if Anger and Fear weren't evident enough through Angry Face and Scaredy Face, this is all intercut by nature clips and scenes of animals being chased or killed or hunting, just in case you missed the cues - this person is ANGRY and this person is SCARED. (As an aside these overused sloppy lazy visual metaphors are inexplicably axed after half an hour, as if someone just got bored putting them in. Or maybe they just forgot.) 

Lest he be left out what is swiftly becoming a frankly terrible party, Morgan Freeman pops up in an unspecified location (University auditorium? Oh yes! This means he is intelligent and well respected) who is on exposition duty for the day, giving a running theoretical commentary on events. Except none of what he says makes any sense, his philosophising 
on existence and the capacity of the brain just rolling next to a young girl being abused by Korean men. Eventually it will all become apparently linked, but even then the nonsense he spouts while actually fairly interesting becomes increasingly ridiculous and then bland and over descriptive.

And we're only half an hour in. After becoming an unwitting drug mule with a bag of blue crystals in her abdomen she gets kicked around by a lower level thug thus splitting said bag and absorbing its contents. Which is obviously what happens after a 3 pound bag of drugs surgically inserted into a 5'6" woman explodes inside her. After some, admittedly impressive, trick camera work following Lucy being thrust around the room while chained to a chair, she becomes...a robot? Oh wait, here comes a big message on screen that says 10% CAPACITY turning into 20% CAPACITY. So that must be what's happening.

At this point I'm sure you see my patience wore so thin it ripped in half. It should get more interesting. It doesn't. Lucy then goes on what seems like a revenge rampage - but is it? She comes across Choi again, and doesn't kill him. She then leaves, phones Interpol and apparently reads their minds - she can tell them what they're doing and where they're from, who their kids are, but somehow can't find the other 3 sliced and spliced drug carriers. Apparently she's looking for them. Then there's the sheer amount of blood, though to what end is not apparent. People get cut open, heads get shot, white walls painted red. As Lucy becomes more powerful the powers she seems to develop seem to be picked up and dropped depending on if she can be bothered. There's no structured development of abilities. She starts by rendering people unconscious with a single thought, yet later on feels the need later on to hand fight a group of men, and then throw them around into walls. Why not just knock everyone out every time? Especially if you're more powerful than before.

Speaking of no structure, Lucy bounces around from place to place, scenario to scenario with no motive at all. Or character. Or development. There's no explanation of narrative, no empathy and way too much theory. Where is she going? Why is she doing this? Where is she now? Things just happen, conversations apparently are had. These conversations are designed purely to get A and B to interact. A good example of this is Lucy calls Morgan Freeman for the first time, and the conversation is basically: 

Lucy: "Hi. I read your hypothesis. I do this. Like you hypothesised" 
Morgan Freeman: "Just like I always imagined. This is great. I like it."

He has no evidence. She offers none. Rather than spend time worrying about how to get characters to believably interact, let's just concentrate on stuff that is awesome, like blood and guns and a hot chick. It's like a high end delivery of a teenagers fever dream, it's purely "what would look cool" with zero substance. 

Ironically, the action is strangely anaesthetised, and even after quite a bombastic end corridor shoot out (which Lucy conveniently ignores), there follows a number of random clips of life events (oh so thats where they all went) and with Morgan Freeman trying to explain it all away again with his assorted boffins, the most ridiculous ending ever committed to screen occurs. Now, I cannot stress enough how absolutely insanely preposterous the ending is. It should be so crazy that it works, and yet it's not. And yet you can't turn away from it. It's like a factory on fire. A terrible, horrific accident. On fire. And then it ends.

And it ends with Lucy saying, in a voiceover (because of the ridiculous ending): "Life was given to us a billion years ago. Now you know what to do with it."

Yup. Take back my Free Pass and watch Leon.