Lucy’s mind is overloaded
intellectuals in which he explains what men and women could achieve if only they could light up every corner of the cerebellum. Besson cuts between scenes of Freeman discussing that hypothetical and Johansson acting on it, as her mind overloads with memories and information that somehow also turn her into an assassin capable of engaging in hyper-violent versions of Jedi mind tricks.
In those moments, Freeman and Johansson act like a tag team tasked with persuading the audience to believe in the ridiculous.
Why, exactly, does the increasing stimulation of underused brain cells turn Johansson into someone who can read other people’s thoughts, control telecommunication devices and turn her hair from blonde to jetblack? Look, I don’t know, but Morgan Freeman thinks it’s possible.
As Lucy, Johansson hopscotches between vulnerability and a robotic commitment to execute whatever her sophisticated, internal data processor tells her to do.
Her performance is just grounded enough to keep Besson’s occasionally inventive, sometimes silly visual flourishes – including an overreliance on random footage seemingly pulled from nature documentaries – from turning the movie into self-parody.
Besson clearly understands that the film’s central myth endures because people are intrigued by the prospect of activating our whole heads. He runs with that idea fulltilt and at top speed, even if it means turning Lucy into a walking X-ray machine/broadcast network/telekinetic demigod.
It’s possible to be swept away by the fun in all that, but only if you’re capable of silencing the messages bubbling through your own grey matter and ignoring the inevitable questions. Like this one: If Johansson’s Lucy has such command of her mental faculties that she is, essentially, the most enlightened being on the planet, shouldn’t she be able to figure out how to get what she wants without causing so much destruction and loss of life?
Not in this cinematic world, where the more you know, the more equipped you are to kill. – Washington Post