Sometimes you think that women really haven’t made that much of a progression with their big screen roles since the time that Sigourney Weaver took on a rather pissed off alien but then when we really get down to it, you can see that hopefully we are moving in the right direction. Unfortunately, a lot of these films still don’t pass the Bechdel test. If you haven’t heard of it, the test is basically applied to any work of fiction and consists of the audience having to enquire if two women in the film can have a conversation without mentioning a man. You wouldn’t believe the amount of films that fail this test, or maybe you would. Either way, no matter how far we have come in terms of representations of females in film, we still have a long way to go.
Thankfully, the amount of genuinely intriguing, savvy and amazing female action heroes hitting the big screen over the last couple of years has been really encouraging. Not only that, but superheroines are now responsible for massive box office draw (silly Hollwyood) with films like The Hunger Games, The Guardians of the Galaxy (Zoe Saldana), Avengers (Scarlett Johansson) and Divergent (Shailene Woodley). On top of that, although there were romantic suggestions in the films, these womens’ lives revolved around other matters besides the men in the film. Thankfully, Hollywood are finally beginning to realise women have far more to think about than finding a Prince Charming.
And so enters Lucy.
Lucy begins with a street argument. Scarlett Johansson is forced to enter a hotel to deliver a briefcase by a boyfriend that we can simply determine as a scumbag. However, when she reaches the desk, she knows something is definitely amiss. With her former lover shot dead in the street, she is pulled into a hotel room where she is forced to sit, tied to a briefcase which she doesn’t have the combinaton for. Under armed guard, she is provided the combination which reveals strange blue bags and with that, she is offered a job.
Offered is a slightly broad word for what happens, Lucy is basically cut open and drugs are placed conveniently into her system to transport to another country. It’s only when she reaches her location does she realise how much trouble she is actually in. Savagely beaten while in prison, the drug that is in her system starts to take affect, accessing all parts of her brain. Lucy is basically going to be the first person to have the full use of her brain and find out what she can do with it.
Now, if your brain can stretch to that information, you should do fine for the rest of the Besson madness. In reality, we use most of our brain according to scientists, we just use different parts of our brain at different times which led to the belief we were only using 10%. On top of that, besides the fact that Besson throws all these powers at Lucy, he doesn’t exactly seem to know what to do with them. It is like Limitless in that respect but we’re not really sure if that’s a good thing.
In terms of performance, Johansson is absolutely amazing as Lucy. As her brain begins to fire on all cylinders, her emotions slowly shut down, almost turning her into a robot. She is entirely aware of what she must do but can keep us guessing long enough to keep us interested.
If we could really find any criticisms here we would say that there is not enough action. You are really expecting Johansson to kick ass here but she doesn’t really do that a lot of that. As well as that, Morgan Freeman just seems to be totally underused here. He probably has a screen time of about fifteen minutes in total.
For the most part, this is just entirely bonkers but it is 89 minutes of really good fun. All Hail Scarlet, our new action Queen.
