Scarlett Johansson will kick major butt in theatres across the world on Friday, as Natasha Romanoff in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. That same day, in select cities, audiences can also see one of the actresses’ more daring performances, as a seductive alien in the film festival favourite Under the Skin. But, for those hoping to mix some of the former film’s brawn with the latter’s brain, there is hope, as Johansson will be playing an omnipotent girl looking for revenge in the thriller Lucy, from La Femme Nikita director Luc Besson.
A trailer for the action-packed summer release is now online and from a first look, it seems that Johansson has just what it takes to play a superhero with much darker aims than anything we would see in The Avengers. In the film, she stars as the titular character, who lives in Taipei and is drugged by very malicious looking men. They plant a bag of drugs in her stomach with the hopes that she will smuggle the substance across the border.
However, the drugs get into her bloodstream and start changing Lucy into a human with incredible mental and physical capabilities, such as an invincibility to pain and the ability to absorb knowledge as instantly as the operating system she voiced in Her last year. The drug inside Lucy is like the one from the movie Limitless, except with a greater exponent of ass-kicking side effects.
Johansson is a smart and fearless actor who has done some of her own stunt work as Black Widow, and whose physical stamina should be well on display here. The trailer is filled with some heart-pounding action, as well as some good laughs, leading us to believe that Lucy could be just the antidote to the doldrums of the late summer movie schedule.
Catch Johansson, and co-stars Morgan Freeman (who also seems to be everywhere these days), Crazy Stupid Love‘s Analeigh Tipton, and Choi Min-sik, best known for his role in the original Oldboy, in action on August 8th, 2014.
