From the very first couple minutes, you can tell this movie is a little weird. And while it is certainly that, it is fun too. The movie is about a woman (Scarlett Johansson) who gets caught up in a drug smuggling run. When the bag she’s carrying inside her body rips and starts leaking this new synthetic drug into her system, her brain comes alive. The premise behind the movie is humans use only 10% of their brain capacity, but this drug opens up all the synapses and neurons and gives her super-human like powers to manipulate the world around her.
It’s all pretty fantastical and extremely shaky scientifically, but it makes for a solid, thrilling movie. The Korean drug lord behind it all comes after her (played by the original Oldboy’s Choi Min-sik), and Scarlett is in turn helped by a scientist voicing the future of humanity (played by Morgan Freeman). The acting in the movie is ok I guess, Scarlett is pretty emotionless but that is part of the script, but this makes it hard to really rate her performance. Everyone else is fairly generic, but the script and effects really make this film. It is different, which in this day and age is very refreshing in a movie, and if nothing else, it does make you think about human’s existence in this universe and where our future may take us. I’ll always give movies that make you do a little thinking on your own an extra gold star.
Jons Movie Takes 