Lucy

Nobody makes an action thriller quite like Luc Besson. It's been twenty years since the French director's cult classic Leon: The Professional, and he is very much back to his old tricks with Lucy, a frequently entertaining, often bizarre mashup of suspect science and gangster politics. Led by Scarlett Johansson, riding her post-Under the Skin wave of edgy appeal, this foray into the world of brain-altering narcotics is consistently ridiculous, and all the better for it.

The premise is this: Johansson's Lucy is led astray whilst studying in Taipei and finds herself the involuntary carrier of a new drug, CPH4, which, we are assured, all the kids in Europe are going to love. Somehow, its inventors have failed to realise that their creation will allow consumers to unlock their full brain capacity. We are told (by none other than Morgan Freeman, so it must be true) that most humans use only 20% of the cerebral function available to them. Unsurprisingly, when Lucy accidentally ingests large quantities of CPH4, things start to go awry.

What is surprising, however, is just how awry they go. Apparently, a person with this kind of brain function is capable of such feats as levitation, mind-control, and, finally, time-travel. And so begins Lucy's bloody rampage from the far East to Paris, where she plans to meet with Freeman's learned scientist to tell him the secrets of the universe. On the way, she pulls a bullet out of her own chest and starts to melt after drinking champagne. We've all been there.

What saves Lucy from being unbearably silly is Besson's awareness of just how far he is straining credulity. Everything is performed as if on speed -- the violence is stupidly gory and, crucially, the scientific discussions are usually interrupted by somebody pulling out a gun. Just when you think it can't get any more absurd, Besson brings out the dinosaurs. There are also some wonderfully tasteless montages designed to hammer home the metaphors. As Lucy looks warily at the obviously dodgy group of thugs in black suits, we cut to an antelope eyeing a pack of lions. Deep stuff.

In spite (and possibly because) of its flaws, it is very difficult not to enjoy Lucy. Johansson leads the film effortlessly, even when her apparently unbearable new consciousness leads her to look like she's constantly suppressing a bout of hiccups. Given the joy Besson takes in draining the film of any emotional or philosophical integrity, it is a brilliant move to go all 2001 on us at the end. He might be making a point about the universe's immense unknowability, with Lucy at its heart as a HAL-like cipher. Or maybe he just ran out of fake blood.