Did you know that the average person only uses 10 percent of their brain, and it’s also said that extraordinary powers could be unlocked if more of the brain could be accessed? If you didn’t, it’s probably because it’s not true.

Nevertheless, this urban legend is the basis for the entire movie that is “Lucy,” and that should have been a red flag right there. Lucy is an American in China who gets caught up in an international drug smuggling ring. They try to smuggle an experimental drug out of the country by surgically implanting it in Lucy, but the bag breaks and the chemical seeps into her.

Able to access increasingly larger portions of her brain, Lucy goes on a rampage attempting first revenge and then to get rid of the rest of the chemical in her body before giving her new-found knowledge back to humanity.

Let’s start with her plan. Her first response upon gaining super powers is to get the bag out of her so it stops leaking. This becomes irrelevant as she immediately consumes the drug anyway. Then she goes to get revenge on the crime lord who did it, killing almost all of his henchmen but leaving him alive.

Why didn’t she just kill him, you may ask? Well the reason is simple: they needed a villain in act three. I can literally think of no other reason why the incredibly destructive Lucy, who we’ve seen kill dozens of people so far without blinking an eye, would leave this man alive.

After that she goes on a mindless journey around the world doing what can best be described as “things.” None of it actually seems to matter, as several of the events are apparently little more than reasons to show her rapidly increasing powers, which include telekinesis and shapeshifting.

Now, these powers she gets looked like they may have been the movie’s only redeeming factor. Sadly, it doesn’t pan out. Lucy doesn’t actually do anything we don’t see in a trailer (which means she basically doesn’t do anything) and the pacing of these abilities is horrible, with the earlier ones being far more interesting than the later ones.

The final fight scene in the movie — which would have been the perfect showcase for her new all-powerfulness — doesn’t even have Lucy in it. It’s just a gunfight between a bunch of French cops and Chinese gangsters.

All of the cops are there because a detective from a different city politely asked them to. The gangsters have a host of weapons including a rocket launcher that they got to France from China by means never made clear. Either the gangsters have a smuggling operation so advanced that getting the original drug out of the country should have been much easier, or they smuggled the rocket launcher by surgically implanting it in someone’s stomach.

The style of the movie is also all over the place. The first half periodically has random inserts from nature documentaries, which is the metaphorical equivalent of a brick to the face. The musical score is awful as well, with peppy pop tunes playing half the time when Lucy is ruthlessly killing people.

Morgan Freeman is in the movie, but his presence is so minor and frankly unnecessary that it’s barely worth mentioning. He does well with what he has, but the writing for this movie is so bad Freeman sounds like he regrets the role with every line.

All of which builds upon the utter garbage that is the science for this movie. A healthy suspension of disbelief is important for any fiction story, but when a movie takes something that is patently not true and builds its entire story on, you’re left with very little suspension for the rest of the movie.

And when the rest of the movie is as bad “Lucy” is, well… I saw this movie for free, and I still paid too much.

1 out of 5 stars.