Imagine a stranger-in-a-strange-land revenge thriller about a wide-eyed Anglo bombshell (Scarlett Johansson) who gets kidnapped and abused by nasty, sweaty, shouting Taiwanese men and then escapes to seek justice. Then imagine this same movie starring, say, a lightning fast kick boxer who can knock a dozen opponents’ teeth out before they can raise a single fist. Now imagine this same movie injected with a dose of apocalyptic science fiction, with the woman gaining strange powers as the story unfolds. Then envision midnight-movie touches mixed into the filmmaking: flash cuts of predators and prey enhancing otherwise typical scenes of plans being hatched; monologues about brain capacity and the true meaning of time coupled with psychedelic visions and wormholes and explanatory objects materializing from thin air.
That’s Luc Besson’s “Lucy,” about an American woman who gets kidnapped into service as a drug mule bearing an experimental synthetic hormone, accidentally absorbs some of it, then sheds her physical, intellectual and even perceptual limitations. I could describe five or six other kinds of movies that in some way also echo “Lucy.” Sections of it may remind you of the original “The Matrix” and the last hour of “Akira,” and the final ten …read more