Lucy is a 2014 French science fiction action film written and directed by Luc Besson and produced by his wife Virginie Besson-Silla for his company EuropaCorp. It is an English-language film shot in Taipei, Paris, and New York City. It stars Scarlett Johansson, Morgan Freeman, Choi Min-sik, and Amr Waked. Johansson portrays the titular character, a woman who gains psychokinetic abilities when a nootropic, psychedelic drug is absorbed into her bloodstream.
Lucy is a 2014 French science fiction action film written and directed by Luc Besson and produced by his wife Virginie Besson-Silla for his company EuropaCorp. It is an English-language film shot in Taipei, Paris, and New York City. It stars Scarlett Johansson, Morgan Freeman, Choi Min-sik, and Amr Waked. Johansson portrays the titular character, a woman who gains psychokinetic abilities when a nootropic, psychedelic drug is absorbed into her bloodstream.
The film was released on 25 July 2014 and became a box office success, grossing over $463 million, more than eleven times the budget of $40 million. It received positive, but also polarized, critical reviews. Although praise was given for its themes, visuals, and Johansson's performance, a number of critics found the plot nonsensical, especially its focus on the ten percent of the brain myth and resulting abilities.
25-year-old American Lucy is studying in Taipei, Taiwan and is tricked into working as a drug mule by her new boyfriend Richard for a South Korean kkangpae and drug lord. Lucy delivers a briefcase to Mr. Jang containing four packets of CPH4, a highly valuable synthetic drug.
After seeing Richard shot and killed, she is captured and a bag of the drug is forcibly sewn into her abdomen to transport the drug to Europe. While in captivity, she is kicked in the stomach, breaking the bag and releasing a large quantity of the drug into her system. She acquires increasingly enhanced physical and mental capabilities, such as telepathy, telekinesis, mental time travel, and the ability not to feel pain. She also becomes ruthless and emotionless. Using her new abilities, she kills her captors and escapes.
Lucy travels to the nearby Tri-Service General Hospital to get the bag of drugs removed from her abdomen. She is told by the operating doctor that natural CPH4 is produced in minute quantities by pregnant women during their sixth week of pregnancy to provide fetuses with the energy to develop. Growing heightened physical and mental abilities, Lucy returns to Mr. Jang's hotel, kills his bodyguards, assaults him, and telepathically extracts the locations of the three remaining drug mules from his brain.
Lucy begins researching her condition and contacts scientist Samuel Norman, whose research may be the key to saving her. After Lucy speaks with Norman and provides proof of her developed abilities, she flies to Paris and contacts a local police captain, Pierre Del Rio, to help her find the remaining three packets of the drug. During the flight, she starts to disintegrate as her cells destabilize from consuming a sip of champagne. To stave off her disintegration, Lucy consumes more of the drug. With the help of Del Rio, Lucy recovers the rest of the drugs. Meeting Norman and his colleagues, she agrees to share everything she knows.
In the professor's lab, Lucy discusses the nature of time and life and how people's humanity distorts their perceptions. At her urging, she is intravenously injected with the contents of all three remaining bags of CPH4. Her body changes into a black substance that begins spreading over computers and other electronic objects in the lab, transforming them into a next-generation supercomputer. She mentally begins a spacetime journey into the past, eventually reaching the oldest discovered ancestor of mankind, Lucy. She touches fingertips with her, then goes all the way to the beginning of time and witnesses the Big Bang. Meanwhile, Jang enters the lab and points a gun at Lucy's head. He shoots, but by then Lucy has reached 100% of her brain capacity and disappears, moving into the spacetime continuum. Only her clothes and the black supercomputer are left behind.
Del Rio enters and fatally shoots Jang. Norman takes a black flash drive offered by the supercomputer, after which it disintegrates. Del Rio asks Norman where Lucy is, immediately after which Del Rio's cell phone sounds and he sees a text message: "I am everywhere." Lucy's voice is then heard stating "Life was given to us a billion years ago. Now you know what to do with it."
- Scarlett Johansson as Lucy Miller: An unwilling drug mule who is accidentally dosed with a drug that activates a myriad of pre-encoded genetic conscious capabilities. The role of Lucy called for "an actress who could be believable as extremely vulnerable, as well as superpowered, when her exposure to an illicit substance inadvertently makes her acquire incredible skills." Impressed by Johansson's discipline, Besson considered her for the role, stating that she was immediately precise and professional, and he "enjoyed the way she talked about the film." He said, "She was excited for the right reason, which was the story. At that moment, it was a done deal for me. She was definitely the one." Angelina Jolie is widely reported to have been originally cast as Lucy, and as having dropped out of the role prior to filming. Although Jolie was in "serious talks" with Besson since 2011 to star in his next directorial effort, then untitled, he stated that she was not his first choice for the role of Lucy.
- Morgan Freeman as Professor Samuel Norman: Producer Virginie Silla stated that given Freeman's experience portraying a character of wisdom, "it was pretty obvious that he was the perfect actor" for the role of Professor Norman.
- Choi Min-sik as Mr. Jang:Besson said that Mr. Jang is the "best villain" he scripted since Gary Oldman's character Norman Stansfield, adding that "Whereas Lucy is the ultimate intelligence, Mr. Jang is the ultimate devil." Besson and his film team "had to go and meet in Korea, talk with him and discuss the story. And it was only at the very end that he said, 'Okay, I'm interested, I want to be in.'"
- Amr Waked as Pierre Del Rio:Besson stated that "Del Rio represents the audience; he's basically you and me," and added that when Lucy has "lost all her emotions by being exposed to the drug," there exists "a tiny spark of emotion that's still there" when she is with Del Rio. Waked also said that Besson having written the script was enough for him to want to star in the film.
- Julian Rhind-Tutt as the polite British antagonist who sews drug packs into the mules
- Pilou Asbæk as Richard, Lucy's delinquent boyfriend in Taipei
- Analeigh Tipton as Caroline, Lucy's roommate in Taipei
- Nicolas Phongpheth as Jii, Jang's top henchman
Speaking of Besson's "interest in making the film one about the way we interact with our environment, and socially as well," Silla said that one of the goals was to bring together a diverse cast to show the planet's diversity and a mixture of the different cultures. She stated, "So we have Scarlett Johansson, who is Caucasian, Morgan Freeman, who is African-American, Min-Sik Choi, who is from Korea, and Amr Waked, who hails from Egypt."
