After watching the trailers for Lucy, I was looking forward to this film -- especially with the proficient Scarlett Johansson playing the title character. Unfortunately, during the very first scene I was already annoyed.

Lucy is attending college in Taiwan. One day she’s met outside a big building by her new friend Richard (Pilou Asbaek), who carries a small briefcase. He asks her if she would do him the favor of delivering that briefcase to Mr. Jang (Min-sik Choi) inside the building.

When Lucy asks Richard what’s in the briefcase, he’s evasive. She declines, and he becomes more agitated. She again demands to know what’s in the case. At this point, Richard confesses he’s in trouble but has been paid $1000 to deliver the item. Then he sticks a roll of $500 bills in Lucy’s bra. Lucy says she doesn’t want the money and doesn’t want to deliver the case. At that very moment, Richard slaps handcuffs on Lucy. And, to make matters worse, the handcuffs are strapped to the briefcase. Richard tells Lucy the only way she will get the case unlocked is to see Mr. Jang.

Luc Besson’s film is supposed to be a sci-fi offering concerning the immense power of the human brain, but to me it seems more about drugs, bad people, and repetitive action that comes to no conclusion. Even with only 10 percent of our brain power – which is what the film tells us most of us have (not true though) – any female facing Lucy’s situation would head to a police station to get the handcuffs off instead of up the elevator to Mr. Jang, a drug lord and gangster.

However, that would leave the movie nonexistent, so Lucy goes up to Mr. Jang’s room, actually sees his minions kill Richard, and is met by a group of thugs. Eventually she's knocked around and drugged. She wakes up the next morning in a bed not knowing where she’s at and with blood all over abdomen. At first we wonder was she raped, brutally beaten, what?

No, she was surgically opened so they could insert a bag of special drugs into the abdomen, so she could transport them out of the country. This scenario inflates as more people show up in different areas in the same situation.

Before we get to 99 percent of the movie -- which shows gangsters and supposedly innocent people shooting each other -- Besson inserts crazy visuals (like mice, and cheetahs chasing gazelles, etc.) between scenes. This only complicates what the film is about and what we’re supposed to think. And then we meet Professor Norman (Morgan Freeman), a noted specialist on the potential of the human brain.

Meanwhile, Lucy somehow escapes the huge team of Jang’s killers, who are barely steps behind her. This allows chase scenes to make up most of the movie. Conveniently, or in this case probably not, the drugs inside Lucy’s body are now increasing her brainpower. Eventually she can see anything or anyone in the world -- and know what everyone is thinking. We suffer through a long list of things she can remember experiencing, such as telling her mother on the phone that she remembers when she was breast-fed. Ho-Hum.

Sci-fi geeks will probably love this film. But I like seeing a little sense to movie plots, even sci-fi ones. To me, the scientific aspects inserted here interfere with reason as well as with any concern for the characters.

It’s only when Lucy goes to Paris to find Professor Norman (with the Korean gangsters only a shadow behind her) that we see the shallowness of the man’s character. Norman and his cronies stand wide-eyed but do nothing to aid Lucy as her body goes into explosive contortion mode and blows up everything around them just to avoid the gangsters. This is a total misuse of an actor like Freeman, who generates more excitement in a Visa commercial than in Lucy.

No doubt Johansson is a powerful actress. Although she’s turned into the new mega hero having appeared in films such as Avengers, Capt. America, and Iron Man, she can actually create wonderful characters who move and impact moviegoers. She was nominated for a teen choice award for her role in The Other Boleyn Girl and nominated for a Golden Globe Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture in Girl with a Pearl Earring and in A Love Song for Bobby Long. Johansson has earned many more awards in films that require a real performance by the actress instead of portrayal of a character who appears almost like a robot and expresses little interaction other than a blank staring face through most of the film.

I hope to see Johansson make more movies like the ones mentioned above -- instead of signing on for something like Lucy to do a role any good actress with a costume could play. 

If drugs, gang lords, killings, and films that have no ending are your thing, then by all means see Lucy. Otherwise, wait to spend your money on a better film.

(Released by Universal Pictures and rated “R” for strong violence, disturbing images, and sexuality.)

Review also posted at www.reviewexpress.com.