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| Promo poster, 2014 |
Spoilers, duh
Going through Cineworld's online booking now requires selecting a seat. The site randomly serves you one and it had me sitting way off on the left side. I immediately changed it to slap bang in the centre isle. I would have preferred to be two rows down, though that would have placed me in the stupid 'D-Box' feedback seats. From what I could see, most people didn't bother changing or sat wherever they felt like. Such as the dude in my seat, or whoever had reserved the one to my right but didn't take it. I was a bit disappointed about that. You never know who you might meet.
Due to the 11am showing being in actuality an 1130 start, I intended to spare myself suffering through the adverts and get the 10am train. As the journey is roughly an hour I'd be able to waltz into my reserved seat with ten minutes to spare. Annoyingly the 10am train was the fast train that skips most of the stops and reached Glasgow at only 1030. As I'd forgotten my earphones the previous day at work, I had plenty of the World Service podcasts to listen to and just about managed to focus on them instead of the Red Bull 'focus challenge' and warm fuzzy family banking adverts. Despite being early I noticed the audience was quite strong for an 11am Thursday showing of a film that had already been out for a week, and quite a gender balanced audience too - not at all a repeat of the male loner crowd for Under the Skin.
A lot of people have said Lucy has proven that a female star can carry an action film (and in doing so perhaps greenlit a Black Widow spinoff). I though Milla Jovovich had proven that with the first Resident Evil, then again maybe that was too ghettoised owing to its video game origins and the less said about the sequels the better. Maybe they're just predicating this revelation on financial success. I wanted Lucy, the character, to be up there with Ellen Ripley as a strong heroine whose lack of a penis is completely inconsequential. More so because one of the trailers was for the Sin City sequel with its atrocious characterisation of women. Lucy, the film, really did not live up to what I was expecting. Perhaps that's my fault since I avoid trailers these days, though others have said they were led to believe it was a different film.
We open with Lucy being drawn into an argument with her scumbag boyfriend. She is forced into handing over a briefcase to a prominent businessman in a hotel lobby and it is immediately obvious given her boyfriend's behaviour that this deal is on the shady and dangerous side. In case you didn't get this point through the acting and other aspects of the medium like the soundtrack, it is intercut with nature documentary footage. I am not joking. I had been quite engrossed by the scene leading up to this and now I was thrown out of it by having to watch extracts from David Attenborough's Life on Earth synchronised with the unfolding events. Lucy walks into the hotel lobby. We cut to gazelle feeding on the Serengeti. Several dark suited men notice her walk in and approach the reception. We cut to a cheetah lying low in the undergrowth, readying itself. She notices the men approach her. We cut to the gazelle looking around nervously. And so on. It's a directorial choice that I believe was to the detriment of the scene. Apparently it's to underline the evolutionary themes by highlighting the similarities of the situations.
The intercuts return when Morgan Freeman's character delivers the exposition. That I can't remember the professor's name is irrelevant because he is simply there to state to the audience his bullshit theory about the future evolution of the human brain. Not potential evolution, for he directly links this to the alleged percentage use (we only use 10%, according to the film) and therefore by incrementing along the linear path he lays out toward 100% we unlock various abilities. There were some interesting non-spurious ideas about the life strategies employed by organisms in amongst the wild mass guessing. Simple ones divide in pure replication effectively preserving their genetic data in a kind of immortality, while complex ones reproduce by combining genetic material into a new generation. We get shots of single-celled organisms splitting and then various mammals and the like having a good shag. These examples were also set to natural history without the cutting back and forth - just Freeman's voice continuing over the stock footage. However, when he starts talking about dolphins (any particular species?) having 20% command of their brains we return to the intercutting with images of aquatic frolicking. It was almost like being in the 80s again. At least the script was aware enough to have an audience member or two at Freeman's lecture call him out on this crap. He admits it's total conjecture and continues on as assembled students and academics nod at his far-out observations.
A lot of the problem with the film is resting the plot on a debunked myth - that we use only 10% of our brains. I suppose if you are writing a screenplay you want something that captures the imagination that you can then explore. Fair enough, I can suspend disbelief and go along with this concept - where are we going to go with it, though? The very down-to-earth realism of the opening drug deal and mobster brutality clashes with the latter fantasy. Lucy has delivered some new super narcotic to the Korean mob and they test it out on a resident crackhead. It apparently melts his brain or something and he slumps in his seat laughing. They shoot him in the head. I don't get how this is going to be the hot new high in Europe that's going to make them millions if it turns users into vegetables. Meth, crack, heroin - they all leave the consumer able to commit crimes in order to fund their habit, thus making the dealers very rich. "CPH4" is a bit like LSD in that incredibly low dosages have spectacular effect which meant it was never a profitable street drug. Disregarding all this, their plan is to have Lucy and three others smuggle the pouches in their abdomens into European cities. Given the size of these four pouches and the potency of low doses being established, you have to wonder why they choose to smuggle in each person what could reasonably supply their entire operation in each country.
Four huge packets (of purified powder) in four mules is quite risky especially when we see what happens when one leaks. Held overnight before her flight, Lucy is beaten by some low-ranking members of the mafia when they make moves toward raping her. A kick to the stomach bursts the bag of CPH4 which begins to flood through her body. She spasms and levitates up the wall onto the roof of the cell, and upon surviving the ingestion of a drug that seems to mentally retard people she instead is bolstered physically and mentally. She breaks free of the chains, but not of the munchies as she finishes her captors' meals. After satisfying her White Castle needs, she forces a taxi driver to take her to the hospital. Lucy wonders in and makes her way to surgery, now able to read the signs in Chinese. She breaks into an operating room and straight-up kills the patient already on the table. I did not expect that. This is because her powers allowed her to deduce the patient was terminally ill from looking at the brain scans. With the corpse now unceremoniously thrown off the table, the doctors can now remove the package from Lucy. This was a scene that pushed me toward disliking the character, and yet there are clear narrative reasons for it taking place - namely the theme throughout that by ascending to whatever higher plain awaits she is simultaneously losing her humanity. She is already exhibiting signs of what TVTropes calls Blue and Orange morality.
Diversion One
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| Man of Steel promo still, 2013 |
Depictions of Superman usually attempt to get round my objections by casting him as the ultimate boy scout which simply dodges the point by constraining him in sweet goodness so that he may do no wrong. In the climax of last year's Man of Steel we see the titular hero engaged in epic battle with the evil Zod. In the process of fighting it out they practically obliterate a city. There are clearly people in buildings as the two Kryptonians slam into one after another, demolishing them. Imagine if you will, an allied soldier of your choice and a Wehrmacht soldier of Nazi Germany. We of course know this is a battle of good and evil, as even the most historically ill-educated understands the Nazis as a byword for evil. The two are out of ammunition and lunge at each other with their knives, wrestling on the ground. It just so happens there's an ant nest on the ground and in their struggle they are wrecking the ants' world. Now try to explain to the ants what the Second World War was about - this really should reveal what it means to live in a world with super-beings. There we go but by the grace of Kal-El.
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As I recall, Lucy has crossed 20% brain capacity as the surgeons remove the package from her side. We know this because at each milestone a titlecard announces the percentage. I didn't have a problem with that stylistic choice since it felt like a nice way of visually marking each chapter in her development. During surgery, for she can now turn off pain, Lucy calls her mother. Lucy's personality and humanity are evidently drifting as her powers increase. The call is somewhat undermined by the lack of the bloody obvious. She rambles on about all the memories she is unlocking and recalling details from her early childhood that would normally be impossible to know (so many questions begged). I genuinely thought after hearing her daughter talk about being one with the universe and recounting the taste of her breast milk in a spaced-out monotonous voice, she would ask 'are you on drugs?'. I mean, really. The story is about a transformative drug after all - it would make sense and everyone is expecting the line. You'd have to go out of your way to write a screenplay without those words. The lead surgeon explains the origins and properties of CPH4. Suffice to say the Korean mob's plan makes even less sense.
Thankfully the film delivers on the promise of action as she gears up to take revenge on the mob. At this point she's strong yet still vulnerable. After dealing with Jang (or does she?), the location switches from Taiwan to Paris as we watch policeman #1 bust the smuggling operation on Lucy's tip-off. In between this Lucy starts to disintegrate on a flight, though I don't really know what was going on there. Perhaps it could have been explained using a gazelle metaphor. So the Korean mob come to town looking to retrieve their merchandise and Jang is alive and super pissed-off. Well he'll have to get used to the feeling of impotency because at this stage Lucy is practically indestructible. The actions scenes herein are nigh castrated by the lack of tension. Lucy confronts the gang of mobsters who have taken possession of the pouches and simply walks right up to them and takes the briefcase. They stand there paralysed now that her powers have expanded to control other minds. Policeman #1 moves into the everyman role alongside Lucy purely to provide the stakes - she can dodge bullets, he can't. Lucy even kisses him for no apparent reason other than stating that he can hang around to 'remind me of humanity', which you might suspect is an abandoned romance sub-plot for it is never mentioned again. The line felt incredibly forced.
There's a car chase through Paris that was occasionally reminiscent of the excellent Ronin except done with CGI, thereby completely undermining the tension (do it with practical effects!). There's more gun battles with zero tension save that Lucy is now so deep in concentration with Basil Exposition in her accelerated approach to 100% that this is the one time she will be susceptible to bullets. During the climatic gun battle there's a brief shot of the head of a marble statue being blown apart by a stray bullet. I almost said SYMBOLISM! out loud. Mr Jang battles his way to the room in which Lucy is undergoing transformation and jumping through time. Again there is a major problem with dramatic tension.
One of the few superhero films I've seen is Iron Man (2008). Tony Stark's powers are courtesy of his suit, and therefore in order to have a climatic showdown with the villain, Obadiah Stane, the antagonist has to be brought up to the hero's level. Hence Stain has his own suit, or else the battle would last three seconds. You'd then expect Jang to consume CPH4 in order to confront our hero and provide the grand finale. He doesn't. He just stands there with a gun to the back of her head, somewhat impressive considering he had large blades thrust through both hands only a dozen hours before. There is no more action to be had as the film shifts away from that style to attempting to stand alongside 2001 A Space Odyssey. Luc Besson states it was his intention to recall that titan of cinematic science fiction. However, much of the dénouement bears greater resemblance to Akira - especially Lucy's transformation and transcendence. The quotations, if you will, of 2001 are mostly in the presence of a black USB stick in Freeman's hand that sharp eyes will note is in fact a window to the stars. That is to say,
My God, it's full of stars!
Unfortunately Lucy falls way short of 2001, and also of my expectations. I think Besson should have announced he was reaching for the more attainable level of 2010: The Year We Make Contact, instead of the Kubrick masterpiece. I avoided harking on about The Fifth Element in this review and yet I feel that had the right idea in couching the absurdity in such a colourful and vivid future. As I state above, Lucy leaves behind all her knowledge for mankind on a USB stargate. Admit it - that's fairly absurd.
To tie the review together, one of the trailers that preceded Under the Skin was for Wally Pfister's Transcendence. Aside from my dislike of Johnny Depp, I couldn't take the premise seriously. Something was just off about it, and apparently audiences reacted the same way when it was released. The ending of Lucy has much in common with the premise of Transcendence, and I wonder whether the two are another example of the binary blockbuster effect (Armageddon versus Deep Impact, etc).
All in all, I don't hate this film in the way I stab at Into Darkness. Alas, Lucy is plain disappointing while still watchable. Scarlett Johansson carries the role becoming less human and more logical as it progresses. That sadly just isn't enough to overcome the plot which would have benefited from a tighter and more concise rewrite (though, better than anything the plot hole gang that brought you Prometheus and Into Darkness could write). Let's be thankful someone tried to make an interesting non-sequel non-franchise science fiction film. Edge of Tomorrow did so and I intend to write a positive review of that soon pending DVD release.
Written August 31st and September 1st
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