REEL DEAL: “LUCY” Disarms Hard-To-Please Critics WIth Intentive Thrills

“The summer’s coolest, juiciest, smartest action movie.” This is how respected film critic Richard Corliss of Time Magazine, describes Universal Pictures' action-thriller “Lucy” from director Luc Besson and starring Scarlett Johansson.

“This female-glorifying picture not only shames all PG-13-rated summer spectacles for their wimpitude but also lures the audience into accompanying it on a third-act trip of ambitious movie madness,” continues Corliss in his review. “It begins with a vision of the first known hominid, the 3 million-year-old female discovered in Ethiopia in 1974 and nicknamed Lucy, then bombards you with allusive montages and the intricate drizzle of computer algorithms, and ultimately spirals into transcendent, Kubrickian speculation, all while satisfying the basic movie appetite for twists and thrills.”

REEL DEAL: Scarlett Johansson Frees Her Mind In “LUCY”

Portraying strong, unique female characters on the big screen is always a welcome challenge for Scarlett Johansson. So when casting his latest action-thriller “Lucy,” and writer-director Luc Besson needed to find 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, Johansson quickly came to mind.

Producer Virginie Besson-Silla describes the unlikely heroine of this story: “Lucy is an average girl who’s having fun with her friends in Asia, and there’s a lot of partying going on. She’s discovering life, but she’s going to discover it the hard way…and go much further than she would ever expect.”

REEL DEAL: Morgan Freeman An Expert On The Human Brain In "Lucy"

Universal Pictures' new mind-bending action thriller “Lucy” examines the possibility of what one human could truly do if she unlocked 100 percent of her brain capacity and accessed the furthest reaches of her mind.

As her abilities keep evolving, Lucy (Scarlett Johansson) reaches out to Professor Samuel Norman, an expert on the human brain, to try to understand what is happening to her. Soon after she is supercharged, she finds herself able to do anything from learning Chinese in an hour to beginning to control space and time.

The production was fortunate enough to have Academy Award® winner Morgan Freeman join the team as the world-renowned neurologist whose lifelong focus is how we access the information stored in our brain.

REEL DEAL: Luc Benson Merges Science With Fiction In Action-Thriller “LUCY”

The human brain and its capabilities have long puzzled and deeply fascinated the most accomplished of scientists. While it has customarily been understood that we tap into much less of our mind’s capacity than we are capable of using, the exact percentage has remained uncertain…and ever fluctuating. With that arresting thought in mind, writer/director Luc Besson took the premise as a starting point for a storyline for his new film, the rip-roaring action-thriller “Lucy” starring Scarlett Johnsson.

Besson imagined what it would be like if we could access the furthest reaches of our brain, asking himself how that would affect our understanding of life…and our role in it. He pondered: “Would we have more control over ourselves and others?”

The result is the incredible story of Lucy (Johansson), a woman accidentally caught in a dark deal who turns the tables on her captors and transforms into a merciless warrior evolved beyond human logic

REEL DEAL: Witness "Lucy" Transform Into Warrior Beyond Human Logic

From “La Femme Nikita” and “The Professional” to “The Fifth Element,” writer/director Luc Besson has created some of the toughest, most memorable female action heroes in recent cinematic history.  Now, Besson directs Scarlett Johansson and Academy Award® winner Morgan Freeman in Universal Pictures’ “Lucy,” an action-thriller that examines the possibility of what one human could truly do if she unlocked 100 percent of her brain capacity and accessed the furthest reaches of her mind.