Movie Time: Lucy

What are the limits of the human mind?

What are the boundaries of what our minds are capable of?

What if... there were NO limits, NO boundaries?

Such are the heady inquiries we will address today.

It's... Movie Time! 

From Luc Besson, the French director of The Fifth Element and Valerian & The City Of a Thousand Planets, today's film is called Lucy,  a 2014 science fiction film starring Scarlett...

I always have trouble spelling her last name.

Let me get some help from her husband, Colin Jost.  

OK, thanks for sorting that out.

So Lucy stars Scarlett Johansson as the title character, a rather unremarkable young American college student in China who find herself having a REALLY bad day that leads to a most incredibly remarkable experience.   

While studying in Taipei, Lucy has hooked up with a new boyfriend named Richard. 

Richard is kinda sketchy and is up to sketchy shit. 

Richard handcuffs a briefcase to Lucy and forces her to go into a nearby hotel.  Don't worry, he assures her, it's a simple gig.

1. Go the front desk and ask for Mr. Jang.

2. Mr. Jang will unlock the cuffs to take possession of the case.

3. Mr. Jang will give her money for the delivery.

Well, that seems simple, right?

Except...

The men Mr. Jang send down are not pleased. Who is this woman? Everyone's chattering away at her in Korean and Lucy's getting really nervous.

Through the front window of the hotel lobby, she witnesses Richard getting shot in the head. Lucy has moved from "getting really nervous" to "totally freaking out".  

Being forced into a elevator by the Koreans is not helping Lucy's mental or emotional state.  

Confronted by Mr. Jang who is pissed off the case was not delivered by Richard but by this woman, Lucy learns the case is filled with 4 packets of a drug called CPH4.  The Koreans expect they're going to make a shit ton of money once this hits Europe.

Hey, what is CPH4?  In it's natural form, CPH4 is a hormone 

produced in tiny quantities by pregnant women during their sixth week of pregnancy to provide fetuses with the energy to develop. 

Along with 3 guys, Lucy is coerced into becoming a drug mule. The packets are sewn into their lower intestines.  

Each of the hapless mules are given plane tickets and instructions what to do when they arrive at their various locations.  Where they will be paid. (Or more likely killed.) 

While awaiting transport to the airport, one of Jang's henchmen decides he doesn't like Lucy's attitude or face or whatever it is about women that ticks off stupid men and he starts beating her. Which includes kicking her in the stomach.   

Which causes the bag of CPH4 in her intestine to rupture. 

A large amount of uncut, unprocessed CPH4 hits her bloodstream.  After twisting and writhing in pain, Lucy suddenly becomes calm, placid. 

Lucy feels... different.  

Her mind is opening up to...  possibilities? 

Lucy gets busy, using her new telekinetic and telepathic powers to do all sort of stuff.

• Lucy kills and escapes from her captors.
• She forces surgeons at a nearby hospital to remove what's left of the CPH4 bag from her abdomen. (She can understand Mandarin Chinese now. And Korean. And French. And... you get the idea.)  
• She returns to the hotel to confront Mr. Jang to read his mind where the other 3 drug mules are going. 
• Lucy then reads ALL of the internet and discovers there's a scientist, Samuel Norman, who may have a clue about what's happening to her.
• From China, she controls Norman's phone and TV set in Paris to introduce herself and he's weirded out.  His crazy theories about expanding brain capacity might be true?
• Reaching across the miles, she contacts Paris police captain Pierre Del Rio with info on how to intercept the drug mules.
• Lucy telekinetically scrambles her short wavy blonde hair to a long straight black 'do.  The shit she did at the hospital made the news and she's wanted by the police.

Lucy is also wanted by a very angry and vengeful  Mr. Jang who with an army of Korean mobsters is determined to make Lucy pay for... whatever it is she's doing.   

Lucy gets to Paris and pairs up with Pierre Del Rio to secure the CPH4 packets, just ahead of the Koreans.  There's a lot of violence and car chases.  

Lucy drives Pierre's car very fast the wrong way down one way streets. And she's never driven a car before.  But she's like unto a god or something so it's all good.  

She meets up with Norman and his colleagues in a university lab where she tells them everything, about who she is, what she is capable of now and where those capabilities are heading as her brain capacity expands. 

Her control of minds and matter will extend to time itself.  

Hey, let's take a look at the trailer for Lucy.

Trying to recount the plot is kind of beside the point.  Director Luc Besson has created a visually trippy excursion into expanding consciousness. Kinetic actions sequences intertwined with moments of intense horror and even more intense scenes of Lucy's increasing awareness.  Besson's examination of Lucy's expanding brain capacity calls to mind the mind bending scenes in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Oddessy.  

There's some criticism of Besson's story relying on the concept that humans only use 10% of our brain and who knows what abilities might unfold if we used more of it. A lot of scientists regard this concept as a myth.  

The science at the core of Luc Besson's story might be discredited but the philisophical truth of Lucy's experience is worth exploring. What happens when we look beyond our limits, when we reconsider our perceptions of the world around us and of time itself.

Maybe pop a gummie or two when you watch Lucy. 

A few words about Scarlett Johansson who is appropriately freaked out at the movie's start as Lucy finds herself in the clutches of the egnimatic and brutal Mr. Jang.  There is some bad shit going down and Lucy's fear and despair feel very real. 

But when the CPH4 takes hold, Scarlett morphs Lucy into someone who immediately understands she has changed and calmly and methodically uses her new found powers to head towards what's next.  Whatever that may be.

In a sort of "Flowers For Algernon" sort of way, Lucy is smart enough to know who she is now, what she can do and also smart enough to know it has to end.  

Or never end? 

Lucy's last words to Pierre Del Rio: "I am everywhere."

Her last words to Samuel Norman:   "Life was given to us a billion years ago. Now you know what to do with it."

__________________________________

Well, what I'm going to do with it is write another blog post.

We're back tomorrow with Star Trekking as I wrap up my look back at the first season of Star Trek.