Quadruple Drabble: Mediocre films by directors who should do better

I have a massive backlog of reviews, and I keep watching new stuff, so there literally aren’t enough days in the year to clear it. In aid of that, here’s three connected quickies — according to wordcounter.net, it should take you less than 90 seconds to read all of them.

The theme, as the title suggests, is directors we have good reason to expect much of, but in this particular instance have let us down. They are Luc Besson, Michael Mann, and (to a lesser extent) Neill Blomkamp.

Here is what they made:

(Why ‘quadruple’? This post has 100 words too!)

Lucy (2014)

2016 #44
Luc Besson | 86 mins | streaming (HD) | 2.35:1 | France & USA / English, French & Korean* | 15 / R

After years producing movies in the Taken stable, Besson directs one himself. Unfortunately it’s a poor effort — not a bad movie, exactly, but a deeply silly one.

Forced to be a drugs mule, Scarlett Johansson accidentally ingests the product and unlocks her brain’s unused potential — yes, that long-debunked chestnut. Such daftness passes muster in, say, superhero origins, where no one’s expecting plausiblility, but Lucy seems to want to genuinely consider scientific ideas… between mediocre action sequences, anyway, which feel like they’re pulling punches to hit 12A/PG-13, even though it’s 15/R.

Less than an hour-and-a-half long, it still feels a slog.

* IMDb also lists Spanish and Chinese, but I swear they’re only spoken very briefly. If we’re being that picky, Italian’s in there too, I think. ^