A university student gets suckered into a drug deal and is then used as a mule. Unfortunately, the sack of narcotics is damaged and the drug leaks into her body. Fortunately the drug stimulates the brain turning her into a super intelligent ninja: Me (the synopsis on the official site and on imdb were awful)

Luc Besson made my favourite sci-fi of all time – The Fifth Element.

He also made the most kick-ass, girl power movie of the 1990s – La Femme Nikita. He made Natalie Portman into a star in Leon: The Professional, which also starred Jean Reno, who got his break in a Luc Besson movie – The Big Blue (it’s about free diving and if you haven’t seen it, you are missing out).

He wrote the film that turned Liam Neeson into a hard man (Taken), and Transporter, and the Arthur stories for children.

He is a good filmmaker and a creative powerhouse. He just loves ideas but sometimes doesn’t know when to let them go (he has completed the screenplay for Taken 3).

Lucy is a good idea.

The film, according to Besson, took nine years to make and the unfocussed storyline does suggest a long project. It really could have done with another set of eyes editing it before he got behind camera. Or during … or after the film was made.

The premise is erroneous, that we only use 10% of our brains and, with the glorious interweb, the humblest researcher can learn this in two clicks of a mouse.

There are a few yawning, gaping, gigantic plot holes that stop willing punters (like me) from just going with the action:

• Why not just kill the sinister Korean gangster after wiping out his henchmen, why let him come after her again?
• How does amping up your brain teach you ninja fighting skills whilst you are locked in isolation?
• And why is gravity no longer relevant?
• Why is it faster to drive the wrong way up a one-way street, or on the sidewalk?

Gripes aside, this is fast paced sci-fi fun, mostly.

The fighting action is excellent and the chases are furiously fast paced. If you can ignore the medium sized plot holes in the hospital or flight scenes these are good fun too.

Scarlett Johansson is becoming the It Girl of powerhouse action, but her acting is nuanced enough for her to play both a flighty student and a computer-like super human who is forgetting how to be, er, human. Amr Maked (the very attractive sheikh in Salmon Fishing in the Yemen) is good as the overwhelmed French police officer, Morgan Freeman is suitably fast on the uptake and statesmanlike as the professor studying the human brain and Min-sik Choi is suitably sinister.

Yet all this just doesn’t add up to a satisfying whole.

It starts with wonderful promise. The scenes of animals intercut with Lucy being sent to, and trapped by, the gangsters are textbook examples of non-verbal film making at its best. Lucy’s touching phone call to her mother, whilst a little overdone, is good.

However later scenes really let the production down – particularly when Lucy is becoming one with the universe (or whatever it is that is happening – trust me, I am not giving plot points away). Meeting the first Lucy, the oldest human-like bones ever discovered, is a nice touch – but then she goes from Carl Sagan’s Cosmos to a biology class video and back again. It slows down the action like a disc brake.

It is amazing what holes can be papered over with fast action and a punchy conclusion – Luc Besson is usually the master of this – but Lucy, like her brain, wanders off in too many directions.

And don’t get me started about the ending.