'Lucy': A Diamond in the Action-Thriller Sky

Gleefully bold, visually adventurous, often funny, strikingly concise and 100% entertaining.

Luc Besson's action spectaculars have always operated on a visceral level. Now he has added a cellular level. "Lucy" tracks the explosive growth of cells in its heroine's brain, which
has been bumping along at 10% efficiency—the average, we're told, for most of us struggling dummies—until something happens to push her up toward triple digits. The movie tracks more than cell growth, of course, since its title character, played with impressive aplomb by Scarlett Johansson, grows from a vaguely defined student living in Taiwan into the sort of superperson that Nietzsche envisaged, even if he got the gender wrong. At the height of Lucy's powers there is nothing she can't do—talk about a headstrong woman—and something of the same can be said for the film. It doesn't always keep track of its own logic, at least not for this 10-percenter, but it's gleefully bold, visually adventurous, often funny, strikingly concise—the whole heart-pounding tale is over in 90 minutes—and 100% entertaining.

The first image we see is that of a cell dividing; these days biology is as hot a discipline on-screen as off. The narrative itself cleaves between Lucy's evolution and an exposition of science and pseudoscience that's conveyed in a lecture-hall setting by a brain researcher named Prof. Samuel Norman. The professor is played, with honeyed orotundity, by Morgan Freeman, and his lecture on cerebral efficiency is illustrated with exuberant multimedia. Mr. Freeman is an actor of such unassailable authority that he could make a case for two plus two equaling pi if the script required it. In this role, though, he simply speculates on what might happen if cerebral efficiency improved, while we see what actually happens to Lucy as her IQ soars.

The why of it happening is fairly straightforward. After brutal Korean bad guys force her to be a drug mule with a pouch sewn into her abdomen, the pouch ruptures and her system is flooded by a newly synthesized and wildly dangerous substance that promotes runaway cell growth. The consequences of it happening are spectacular. Dendrites multiplying exponentially, synapses firing ever faster and the guns in her hands blazing at anyone who stands in her way, Lucy seeks out Prof. Norman, whom she perceives as a resource and a refuge, while contending with a level of stylized violence that evokes "Pulp Fiction."

Scarlett Johansson in 'Lucy' Universal Pictures

All sorts of movie references are evoked in this fevered dream of a sci-fi thriller: elements of "Frankenstein" and "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde"; a variation on the preface to "2001: A Space Odyssey" in which an ape finds itself confronted not with a vertical slab but with Lucy seated in an office chair; a recapitulation of the same movie's climax minus the planets and stars, the star child and the Louis XVI furniture. The most obvious homage is the one Mr. Besson pays to himself—puissant women have been a hallmark of his most interesting features, "La Femme Nikita," "The Fifth Element" and "Angel-A." (He also perpetrated his own lavishly trashy version of "Joan of Arc.")

Until now, though, his films haven't been graced by a star of Ms. Johansson's gifts, and it's a collaboration made in pulp heaven. Ms. Johansson has played aspects of this role in the recent past—as the nameless, womanlike creature in "Under the Skin"; as Samantha, the vocal soul of a smartphone's operating system in "Her." Far from a problem, that's one of many fascinating resonances in a constantly commanding performance. Lucy is Samantha's live-action soul sister; she, too, computes data at unthinkable speed, while annihilating distance and time.

Morgan Freeman and Scarlett Johansson in 'Lucy' Universal Pictures

"Lucy" does present the problem, at least for a while, of understanding its heroine's state of spirit at crucial junctures. What is she feeling, if anything, as she shoots her victims down? Why her faintly robotic head tic? Has she already taken leave of humanity? Such questions are eventually answered, though, and even poetically, as in a scene between Lucy and a French cop, and in a mesmerizing hospital sequence when Lucy grabs someone's mobile phone and calls her mom. That's when we get to feel what she feels, which is a lot.

1. Lucy

   2014 Film
2. 6.9/10-IMDb

   60%-Rotten Tomatoes
3. A woman is accidentally caught in a dark deal, turns the tables on her captors and transforms into a merciless warrior evolved beyond human logic.
5. Initial release: July 25, 2014 (USA)
6. Director: Luc Besson
7. Running time: 89 minutes
8. Music composed by: Éric Serra
9. Cast: Scarlett Johansson
10. Genres: Science Fiction, Adventure Film, Action Film