Later this month, we’ll finally see Lucy, La Femme Nikita director Luc Besson’s latest female-powered action extravaganza. It’s hard to know whether or not we should be excited for this movie. Though it does star the excellent Scarlett Johansson and Morgan Freeman, not to mention Oldboy‘s Choi Min-Sik as a baddie, the last good movie Besson directed was The Fifth Element, way back in 1997. That’s not to say that the action auteur has been resting on his laurels since then, having contributed to a great many flicks including District B13 and Taken. But when you see Luc Besson’s name in Lucy‘s marketing campaign, it just doesn’t mean quite what it used to.
Regardless, I’m still staying cautiously optimistic for Lucy, which centers on a young woman (Johansson) who begins to unlock an extraordinary amount of her brain power after drug traffickers kidnap her and put a bag containing experimental drugs inside her, which then leaks. Naturally, as she continues to grow more powerful, Lucy begins to pursue her kidnappers with intentions of taking revenge.
This week, two new clips hit the web, one highlighting a meek and terrified version of the lead character (pre-superpowers, we can assume) and one finding a badass Lucy giving the police instructions (while somehow changing her hair… with her mind).
Check them out below:
A new set of images from Lucy has also landed online, and you can check those all out below, including some behind-the-scenes shots of Luc Besson. They don’t add anything to what we already know about the plot, instead just strengthening my opinion that Johansson is going to completely kick ass in this role. Besson is skilled at developing movies around action heroines (if you haven’t seen it, La Femme Nikita is truly one of the best action movies of all time), so there’s reason to hope that this project will come together as more than just a collection of cool action sequences.
Lucy opens on July 25th.
