If you’re seeking an intermittently exciting mid budget action movie boasting a well-known star in the lead role, then look no further than Luc Besson’s EuropaCorp, the company famed for reinventing such unlikely names as Liam Neeson, Kevin Costner, and John Travolta as aging badasses.
On the other side of the coin, Scarlett Johansson was already a proven ass-kicker and certifiable draw when she signed on to headline Besson’s Lucy, which marked the writer and director’s first out-and-out actioner from behind the camera in well over a decade. As it turned out, the insane romp went on to become his highest-grossing effort ever.
Exploding out of the blocks, the high concept sci-fi thriller went on to earn an impressive $463 million at the box office on a budget of less than $40 million, even if the increasingly illogical plot devolves into a polarizing clusterf*ck by the time the third act reaches its conclusion.
Johansson is excellent in the lead, balancing the physical and emotional aspects of her performance beautifully, while even the most absurd scientific pseudo-babble in the screenplay sounds a whole lot more palatable when it’s being espoused in the syrupy tones of Morgan Freeman.
Almost eight years after release, and Lucy has roared back to life on streaming, with FlixPatrol revealing the bonkers genre mashup has charted as one of the ten most popular titles on iTunes in multiple countries around the world.