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

A Hijacking

Tobias Lindholm is a Danish writer and director who British viewers will know from the excellent political TV series Borgan for which he wrote various episodes and also for writing the screenplay for The Hunt (2012) a thought provoking film involving child abuse. His first attempt at writing and directing was with R (2010) a tough gritty Danish prison drama that had its UK premiere at the 2010 Edinburgh International Film Festival.

 

The ships cook Mikkel Hartmann.

The company's CEO Peter Ludvigson.

His second feature film, A Hijacking (2012), which he also wrote, is about four months of negotiations that take place after Somali pirates seize a Danish merchant ship the MV Rosin in the Indian Ocean and hold it for ransom.  This excellent procedural thriller avoids showing the actual hijacking, which obviously a Hollywood remake will not be able to resist! Lindholm to his great credit completely sidesteps any heroics in favour of the protracted negotiations between the ship and the shipping corporation. On the ship we have a seven-man crew held under armed guard by the Somali’s. The captain is very sick so the pirates spokesman’s on board the ship converses with the ships cook, an English speaking Dane Mikkel Hartmann played by Pilou Asbaek who was lead actor in Lindholm’s first feature and also one of the main stars in Borgan where he played Kasper Juul, Birgitte Nyborg’s Communications Chief. On dry land the company’s CEO Peter Ludvigson, another Borgan regular Seren Malling, handles communications under the guidance of a professional negotiator Gary Porter, who really does this for a living! 

From ship....

 

....to shore.

 The strength of Lindholm’s direction is how he handles the tension and the overbearing sense of panic between ship and shore which gradually builds up the longer the negotiations go on and we witness the deteriorating conditions on the MV Rosin and how the stress builds between the CEO and his advisers. You’re constantly on the edge of your seat wondering how it will end and if the crew will get safely off the ship and return home. It’s a movie that’s not about an actual hijacking but about the people involved and how it affects them, the technicalities of negotiation and the monitory value of human life. An interesting point, and one that enhances the realism, is that it was filmed on an actual cargo ship out at sea and one that had been hijacked previously!