Lucy.

Luc Besson rarely lets the viewer down, a French director, producer and writer who is best known for thrillers and action films like Nikita (1990) through Leon (1994) to Adele Blanc-Sec (2010) and the badly received The Family (2013) - which I thoroughly enjoyed.  His latest directorial outing, of which he also wrote the screenplay and produced, is Lucy (2014) a movie that is in a class of its very own and defines what entertainment should really be about. But if Besson ‘is the man’ then Scarlett Johansson ‘is the woman’, how I love a women with a gun!

 

I love a women with a gun!

Johansson is Lucy a young American living in Taipei, Taiwan who is conned by her boyfriend Richard (Danish actor Pilou Asbaek whom you may have seen in A Hijacking 2012) into delivering a briefcase to Mr Jang (Choi Min-sik, the star of two classic S Korean movies 2005’s Lady Vengeance and 2003’s Old Boy) who turns out to be a notorious South Korean gangster. He kidnaps Lucy and forces her, and three other men, to become drug mules, operating on them and inserting bags of CPH4 into their stomachs. While waiting her turn to deliver the drugs she gets beaten, kicked in the stomach, which in turn releases the drug into her system with very dire circumstances. The drug is a synthetic version of the chemical that stimulates brain growth in foetuses, but in the large dose that Lucy imbibes in to her body it can escalate the use of the human brain from the 10% we generally use to a level unknown to Professor Samuel Norman (Morgan Freeman) who specialises in brainpower. Our heroine gradually develops psychokinetic abilities that according to Mr Besson result in supernatural powers. With the help of Pierre Del Rio (Amr Waked - Winter of Discontent 2012) of the French police force Lucy set’s out to track down the remaining drug mules with Mr Jang and his gangsters in hot pursuit.

 

Lucy passes on the secret of life to Professor Norman.

Another visually rich film, head and shoulders above many other action thrillers, a film without a single dull moment, of course it’s a exaggerated load of hocus pocus but to get the best from this exciting film just ignore the nonsensical plot, sit back and enjoy 90 minutes of complete escapism – and Scarlett Johansson!

http://youtu.be/MVt32qoyhi0

Winter of Discontent.

Made as a docudrama by Egyptian documentary maker Ibrhim El Batout Winter of Discontent (2012) takes us back to January 25th 2011and the bloodiest moments of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak regime and sets out to help us understand how the fate of a nation was decided. The January 25 Revolution was a movement that organised demonstrations, marches, plaza occupations, riots, non-violent civil resistance, acts of civil disobedience and strikes. The revolution included Islamic, liberal, anti-capitalist, nationalist and feminist elements.

 

Torture is part of politics in many countries. 

According to varied and trusted sources we are informed that in less than a year 2286 people lost their lives, 371 lost their eyesight, 8469 were injured, 27 detained woman activists were tested for virginity by the army and 12000 people were imprisoned after military trials - a number that continues to rise! The story is told through three characters, computer programmer Amr (the Cairo born Amr Waked, an international actor seen in the French TV series Spiral 2012, Syriana 2005 and Salmon Fishing in the Yemen 2011), TV presenter Farah (Farah Youssef) and security forces operative Adel (Salah El Hanafy a stage actor appearing in his first feature film). All their paths originally crossed in 2009 when Amr and Farah were lovers and Adel had Amr imprisoned and tortured for political reasons that are not fully explained. When the 2011 protests kick off Amr uses his computer skill’s to bypass official internet censorship and upload witness testimonies of government backed atrocities on to YouTube for the outside world to see. Farah is beginning to disbelieve her own news broadcasts and Adel is in his element torturing protesters.

 

The demonstration.

Does the film succeed in giving you an understanding about the fate of Egypt? I'm not so sure it does. It would certainly help the viewer to appreciate what's going on if you they some prior knowledge of the subject’s background. You hear but never see the demonstrations until the end of the film. A rather slow and intense experience that started life without a script let alone a budget and it shows.  Not a film to enjoy but one to raise awareness. These depressively real life events continue, and not just in Egypt!