Lucy rather foolishly agrees to deliver a package for her shady ex-boyfriend. Before she knows it, she's being offered the job of drug mule as an alternative to death. One punch to the stomach too many later and the experimental drug leaks into her system, enhancing her mental capacities and giving her incredible powers. Will that be enough to fight off the gangster's army of henchmen on the streets of Paris?

Luc Besson has always been about the look rather than the content, or sense, of his movies and that trend continues with this quite incredibly bonkers action movie that starts off conventionally enough, continues that way and then suddenly takes a sidestep into the crazy. What starts off a a grungy crime drama morphs into a gritty superhero origin movie as Lucy grapples with what is happening to her and finds that it comes with some very useful side effets, such as the ability to throw people around at a whim, instantly recall tiny details and master all of the information on the internet in a few hours.

The pace doesn't flag and moves quickly from Lucy's escape to her discovery of a man who can explain everything (Freeman, playing his smart persona with the minimum of effort) to the final showdown with no wasted time or effort. Bullets fly and so do special effects, but all in service of the plot.

Scarlett Johansson has prove she can handle the action stuff with her turn as Black Widow in the Marvel films, but she brings a lot more depth and reality to the terrified Lucy at the beginning and the slowly dehumanising Lucy in the final act.

Ah yes, the final act. Heavily influenced by anime, the plot gets nuttier and nuttier as Lucy enters computers, becomes a tangled mess of tendirils and overcomes both time and space themselves to kickstart the human race (or something like that). It's a tour de force of special effects, editing and hope over sense and comprehensibility.

The star's pure wattage allows the film to skate over the rougher parts and the short running time doesn't allow for the lack of sense to sink in.

LUCY is bold, brash and utterly bonkers. It's also undisciplined, rough and all over the place. Fortunately, it doesn't hang around long enough for the latter to overpower the former.