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Bryann Jones
Mr. Hackney
Rhetoric 101
22 October 2014

Lucy, Best or Worst Movie about Brain Capacity?

To Begin, In Luc Bessons film Lucy staring Scarlett Johansson whom plays the main
character an American student living within the Taiwanese capital Taipe, is forced to act as a
drug carrier for a Korean gang. During this ordeal the powder shes carrying leaks into her
bloodstream, and then Lucy entails on a feat to find her oppressors and enact her revenge. Tom
Huddleston and Christopher Orr find Lucy to have similar qualities to other movies about brain
capacity, and their views on the quality of the movie and the need to tell background knowledge
about the movie differ. They both concur that Lucy is not a prominent award winning movie but
has its highlights and will still be considered a box office favorite.
To continue, Orrs review of Lucy begins with his immediate criticism of the movies
flawed storyline. Orr argues that Bessons film was mind-bendingly miscalculated as a sci-fi
vehicle for Scarlett Johansson. Orr continues to promote that Scarlett Johansson is a moderately
charismatic actor whom bewildered the film. He continually slanders the movies poor casting,
excessive narcissistic graphic animations, and extremely short length. Orr states Lucy is so
idiotic that the only way to properly convey its flaws is to enumerate them.
Orr describes Lucy as beyond-the-pale sloppy, so disastrous in both conceit and
execution, that it simply defies conventional analysis. He insinuates that the sheer quantity of
inanity that Besson squeezes into his limited screen time beggars that of awful movies of
substantially greater length. (Orr). He suggests Lucy is equally as horrific as movies like The
Happening, The Words, and Broken City as these movies in his opinion were utterly beyond
repair.
Another aspect, was Huddlestons review of Lucy which immediately focused on the
positive qualities of the movie. He immediately states that the movie was ridiculous, highly
watchable, at points startlingly psychedelic action thriller (Huddleston). Huddleston then
continues to suggest that the movie was probably Luc Bessons best film since Lon, which he
explains was not a good movie at all. He felt that crammed as it is with snarling foreign
villains, feisty punch-ups and a peculiar habit of intercutting frames of random wildlife footage
the storyline had enough action to keep you glued to your seat for the remarkable short eightynine minute film.

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Although Huddleston had a relatively short review managed to firmly point out some key
strong suits of the movie and utter failures. He commented on how Besson hauled in Morgan
Freeman into the movie as a neuroscientist in a vain effort to give legitimacy to the film, which
he felt was completely unnecessary. He also felt that it was strange that in a science-fiction with
a pseudo-scientific plotline that Morgan provided a more moral, and opinionated viewpoint
rather than a scientific viewpoint that you would expect in a science fiction movie.
Finally, Orr and Huddleston share varies complex opinions of Lucy. Both Orr and
Huddleston found Morgan Freeman to be an unnecessary addition to the cast. They also found
Luc Bessons work to be flawed but Huddleston maintained that Lucy was an exception. Orr
overall found Lucy to be a horrible excuse of a movie which he went through great lengths to
emphasize throughout his review. Huddleston on the other hand found the movie highly
entertaining and had very little to point out wrong with the movie. Huddleston gave a subtle
review which was surprisingly short but did summarize the movie briefly.
Orr gave an aggressive review which was excessively long and summarized almost every scene
of the movie in precise detail. Orr had much more commentary of flaws he saw within the movie
and gave relation to other movies that either lacked the same things or had showed qualities of
greater standards.
Huddleston did relate one time to another movie during his review but he gave an opinion
of the movie as a whole and did not relate its qualities back to the movie at all. These reviewers
both gave highly opposing opinions of the movie but still managed to find common ground of
support for mutual likes and dislikes of the movie. Essentially Huddleston and Orr agree that the
movie Lucy has similar qualities to other movies about brain capacity, and their views on the
quality of the movie and the need to tell background knowledge about the movie differ. They
both also concluded that Lucy is not a prominent award winning movie but has its enticing
moments and will still be considered a box office favorite.

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http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/lucy_2014/?search=lucy
http://www.timeout.com/london/film/lucy-2014
http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/07/life-is-futile-so-heres-what-to-dowith-it-according-to-lucy-a-spoilereview/375006/