This film was one of those I’d not even heard of until the trailor came up before Guardians of the Galaxy at the cinema. It looked interesting so when I had a spare evening and noticed it was on I went to see it.
I already knew that the original premise of the brain only using 10% of its capacity was a little wide of the truth but I can hardly fault them when I use the same logic behind the science in my own Sherdan series, so ignoring the dodgy science, the film has a really interesting concept. The rest of the science I can’t directly speak for. It seemed legit but it was out of my field of study so might have been and equally might not have been. I imagine it was probably a little of both.
From the trailor I expected a kick-ass action movie where a girl gets revenge on the people who experimented on her. Admittedly the trailor was miss-leading in the whole why she had this happen to her sort of thing. It wasn’t an experiment, it was an accident. It also wasn’t quite as kick-ass as I was expecting. There was plenty of action, but it wasn’t the sole focus of the film.
On top of the action there were some gorgeous scenes like the picture on the right. Thanks to the extra brain capacity Lucy could see things others couldn’t and the makers of the film took the opportunity to do some gorgeous things with the cgi to show us what it might be like. Although I don’t normally like cgi for the sake of cgi, I have to admit I found it stunning. Somehow the makers of this film managed to combine action with breathtaking beauty and make it fit together. There was a very unexpected harmony between the two.
This only grew towards the end of the film and there was a gorgeous scene right near the end that must have been several minutes long and had no dialogue, very little action, yet was mesmirising. I won’t spoil the ending with too much detail, but it was cool and brilliant storytelling.
The acting was also pretty amazing. Let’s face it, Morgan Freeman, can pretty much do no wrong. he’s the master of subtelty and perfectly delivered lines. Several of the interactions between his charater and Lucy had me chuckling out loud.
Scarlet Johansson managed the transformation from not quite all there blonde to overwhelmingly intelligent super-human incredibly well. Also managing the subtle expressions that gave tiny suggestions of personality away but not all at once.
All in all, I found I was pleasantly surprised. The violence was ever so slightly gratuitus but no more than I expected and everything else that I hadn’t expected was an added bonus. A very awesome, under marketed film.