Freeview film of the day: Lucy

Premiere

9.00-10.45pm Channel 4

Slick, brightly coloured, violent, funkily camp, hallucinogenic, expensive, with an international cast and a pounding score, Lucy could only be a film by writer/director Luc Besson. Scarlett Johansson plays the inadvertent drug mule who, having had narcotics sewn into her abdomen by the mob in Taipei, has a nasty accident, making the contents leak into her body. The twist is that the drugs inside her give her superhero-like powers – telepathy, telekinesis, shapeshifting, higher consciousness – and she is able to take on the baddies with the help of Morgan Freeman’s sage-like professor. It’s wham-bang stuff, suitably preposterous and laced with visceral special effects and upside-down camera angles. The car chases and gunplay are conventional, and Johansson does her usual deadpan schtick, but the globe-trotting means a change of scenery and you certainly won’t nod off.

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