{"id":195,"date":"2025-07-18T00:35:36","date_gmt":"2025-07-18T04:35:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gregneeld.com\/?p=195"},"modified":"2025-07-18T00:51:05","modified_gmt":"2025-07-18T04:51:05","slug":"lucy-luc-besson-2014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregneeld.com\/?p=195","title":{"rendered":"LUCY (Luc Besson, 2014)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Guaranteed summer fun from Luc Besson. Tight like an overwound watch at the beginning, the second half gets weighed down by the overuse of Matrix-style effects and conceits, and the seriously provocative ideas the director presents at the beginning de-evolve into the sort of pseudo-philosophical platitudes that seemed profound when you were 15 and getting high for the first time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is still the hands-down, go-to summer movie for me, it\u2019s just not a classic on the level of \u2018Leon: the Professional<\/em>\u2018 or \u2018le Femme Nikita<\/em>\u2018. Like George Clooney with \u2018the Monuments Men<\/em>\u2018, Mr. Beeson suffers the side-effect of being both the writer and director of this project. His ideas on time and civilization and the purpose of life being the transmission of knowledge are well-presented, in a large part by clever re-use of \u2018Baraka<\/em>\u2018 footage during a lecture by the noted brain scientist Morgan Freeman plays, but by the close of the film, his well of fresh ideas has run dry, and we\u2019re left with cosmic semi-gibberish, borrowing a little too freely from \u20182001<\/em>\u2018 and \u2018the Matrix<\/em>\u2018.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"lucy-2014-movie-screenshot-gun-pointing\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In spite of these criticisms, it is impossible not to enjoy Scarlett J. when she\u2019s on her game (and she is) and has a gun in her hand, and kinda foolish to expect anything significant from Luc Beeson ever again (although I did, I did). In fact, her phone call to her mom at the inception of her metamorphosis is touching and a damn sight better than Natalie Portman\u2019s in \u2018the Black Swan<\/em>\u2018 (which undoubtedly was one of the scenes that made her Oscar-worthy); however, in this shining moment, and symptomatic of the major failing of this enterprise, Scarlett utters what is probably the worst line of dialogue I\u2019ve heard all year (\u201cI remember the taste of your milk in my mouth\u201d).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Add my voice idol, Morgan Freeman, and the first English-language film for the original \u2018Oldboy<\/em>\u2018, Min Chik-soi (although, like Song Kang-ho in \u2018Snowpiercer<\/em>\u2018 he\u2019s in great enough demand that he doesn\u2019t actually have to parlez Anglais) and I\u2019m all in. Mr. Freeman\u2019s dialogue with Miss Johannsson over his hotel room TV is also another scene full of emotion, but most of the time he\u2019s just there to fill this weak characterization with gravitas. Mr. Choi has plenty of dialogue, but it\u2019s all in Korean and none of it is subtitled (an interesting choice by Beeson, Choi still conveys, although we are in the dark most of the time, much like Lucy).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a side note, I won\u2019t say Min Chik-soi was wasted in his role as bad guy. He was as good a choice for the part as could be made and I\u2019m glad to see my favorite Korean actors and actresses gradually crossing over. But it\u2019s basically a shit role in a fluffy summer film and not representative of his range. Considered possibly S. Korea\u2019s premiere actor, the man certainly shines as a psycho in this one<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Much better than a \u2018Men in Black\u2019 sequel, but definitely weaker than his best work, Luc Beeson\u2019s \u2018Lucy<\/em>\u2018 (and, had the character\u00a0 been male would he have been named Luc?) is enjoyable if approached with the right attitude: a light and disposable summer film with delusions of grandeur. The director still seems to be stumbling down the stony path, with this film misfiring as often as it catches fire. Here\u2019s hoping he uses 20% of his brain power on his next screenplay.

[originally published 7-26-14]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Guaranteed summer fun from Luc Besson. Tight like an overwound watch at the beginning, the second half gets weighed down by the overuse of Matrix-style effects and conceits, and the seriously provocative ideas the director presents at the beginning de-evolve into the sort of pseudo-philosophical platitudes that seemed profound when you were 15 and getting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":197,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-filmspiel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregneeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregneeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregneeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregneeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregneeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=195"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/gregneeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":207,"href":"https:\/\/gregneeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195\/revisions\/207"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregneeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregneeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregneeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregneeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}