It's a film that takes great delight in her essentially co-opting a long series of tropes and storylines typically reserved for men in stories of this type, which is an old trope in the feminist action movie wheelhouse.

| Sep 26, 2016

let it grab you by the noodle and zap you into its whacked-out vision of human existence. You'll feel much better for it, I promise.

| Sep 22, 2016

Say what you will about 'Lucy,' which is an absurdly silly and sometimes aggressively stupid movie, but it's at least interested in showing us something new.

| Jun 18, 2016

[A] supremely silly and pleasurable action movie.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 29, 2014

It would be overstating it to suggest that Besson is enjoying a major creative renaissance but Lucy is the best film he has made in a very long time.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 22, 2014

Lucy is a stupendously effective exercise in high-end misdirection.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 22, 2014

Besson is a keen pilferer of anything that's looked good in other people's movies.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 22, 2014

Who remembers the last good Luc Besson movie? Time to reset that particular clock, as he's returned with a stormer.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 21, 2014

Its sputtering eccentricity is at least preferable to the flat chauvinism of so many shoot-'em-ups - and it's certainly Besson's most enjoyable bad movie in ages.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Aug 21, 2014

Lucy is not about to win any prizes from Mensa ... but this isn't quite like any other blockbuster you'll see this year.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 19, 2014

What begins as a thrilling pastiche of comic-book formula gets bogged down in its own scientific prattle - not that you ever stop adoring Johansson's magnificent heroine.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 18, 2014

Here, at last, is a film based on the Kantian model of transcendental idealism.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 12, 2014

Johansson, a good actress, succeeds in making this nonsense more believable than it otherwise might be.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Aug 4, 2014

After a decade of uncertain performances in often thankless roles, Scarlett Johansson is interesting again. She seems to have found her niche in science fiction: Luc Besson's Lucy is the third film in a row - after Her and Under The Skin.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 4, 2014

No one has ever accused French action director Luc Besson of thinking too hard, and this frantic exercise in pseudoscience and goofball metaphysics is best enjoyed by following his lead.

| Jul 31, 2014

Part philosophical/scientific treatise, part action movie, a film that goes from mayhem to boredom in a heartbeat.

| Jul 25, 2014

Besson has made very, very bad films in the past, but this is the first time he has presented one so idiotic that the only way to properly convey its flaws is to enumerate them.

| Jul 25, 2014

Scarlett Johansson carries the film effortlessly, bridging Besson's narrative and logical ellipses by fully embracing his crowd-pleasing intentions and convincingly depicting Lucy's psychological transformation.

| Jul 25, 2014

This movie worries that humanity is wasting its potential, which is a bizarre fear for a movie that has this many nonsensical shootouts. But that's what on Besson's mind: the Big Bang and bang-bang.

| Jul 25, 2014

I know we're supposed to think that Besson's daffy cinematic calisthenics are entertaining because at least they are not boring. But I was bored.

| Original Score: C | Jul 25, 2014