Verdict: * * * 1/2 – –

Lucy (Scarlett Johansson) is a college kid who looks and acts smart, but loves to party and has a real creep for a boyfriend. Not just a creep who looks at other girls’ boobs, but the kind of creep who is a courier for extremely powerful drug lords and wears Stetson cowboy hats made in Taiwan. Yeah, that kind of creep.

Sorry, didn’t mean to throw that Stetson made in Taiwan thing at you. That may have been a little strong. Seriously though, he makes it a point to tell her his Stetson is made in Taiwan, so… he’s creepy. Where was I? Oh yes!

Anyway, being creepy, he lures Lucy into delivering this particular shipment of drugs for him and we sit there for almost ten full minutes while they argue about it. All this time, the scene Lucy, her creepy boyfriend and his Stetson are chewing up are punctuated by scenes from the Serengeti with big cats stalking prey, as if the writer/director (Luc Besson, The Fifth Element, The Transporter) pretty much thought the audience would be entirely too stupid to see what was happening here. Lucy is being stalked by predators (her creepy boyfriend, his Stetson, and the powerful drug lord). Okay, we get that.

Then suddenly I start to see, as Lucy goes along with the drop off and the shizzle really hits the fan, what Luc Besson was trying to do. Much like The Fifth Element and practically everything else he’s ever done, he has injected a very sophisticated rhythm into the movie that creates a 3D perspective from a 2D screen.

Now, just so you know, there are no real spoilers in this review. Everything that happens in the movie, you’ve already seen from the trailer. You know what happens to Lucy. The deal goes south, they need her to deliver the baggie of a brand new synthetic drug to the United States and the only way to get it through customs is to sew it into her abdomen. Unfortunately, word of this didn’t reach a couple of thugs who work for the drug lord and one of them beats her up because she wouldn’t let him rape her. The baggie leaks inside her and WHOOSH! Off goes her brain into orbit towards Godlike power.

This is all inside the first half hour of the movie. After that, things really take off and you’re left pretty much breathless when the credits roll. There is a subtle philosophical idea that this movie is riding on, brought to you by Professor Norman (Morgan Freeman), that asks, “Are humans more concerned with ‘having’ than with ‘being’?” All throughout this movie, everyone wants something. Everyone is trying to get something. Bad guys want their drugs back. Cops want the bad guys. Everyone wants to shoot guns because guns make them feel powerful. Prof. Norman wants to know what Lucy knows but isn’t sure the human race is ready for that knowledge.

But is that such a bad thing that we’re more concerned with having than being? People are wrapped up in their own individual worlds, each world containing everything they think about and feel emotionally, and yet they never do see beyond that world. We cannot (at this time) walk in another man’s shoes, so to speak. All the while Lucy ascends beyond quantum physics and sees all these individual worlds as One World moving in an infinity of different directions, all measured by time. As she sees them, she can control them and she basically spends 24 hours ascending from human to “beyond” as her brain capacity is gradually activated more and more.

Lucy is an idea about ascending to the next level of evolution… really fast. What would actually happen if we expand our minds and open up our worlds? Will this happen eventually? Could we, as limited consciousness individuals, really see that we are each One with All? Could we see beyond the labels and illusion and see that we simply… are?

With action and philosophy combined, Luc Besson brings what I would consider a beautifully done piece of art to a world in which it would be most attractive. He blends action and violence with thought and by the time the credits roll, you’re both wired and deeply composed at the same time! I think this flick would have been better done with a much younger lead actress, however. ScarJo is awesome, but a little old to be the naive party “kid” she was supposed to playing. That said, I thought this one was really well done!

Have you ever gone into the theater expecting a movie to turn out one way only to be disappointed or if your lucky it turns out better than expected!  These are two of those movies! You’ll have to listen in to find out! Is it Lucy starring Scarlett Johannson and Morgan Freeman or Hercules Starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, John Hurt and Ian McShane. We’ve given our reviews let us know yours call our voice mail 260-573-0015 or email us moviemadnesspodcast@gmail.com or post on our Twitter or Facebook Page

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