In the first ten minutes, Johansson plays the "damsel in distress"—frantic, crying, terrified. By minute thirty, she has shot a taxi driver without flinching and is cutting a bullet out of her own shoulder using a mirror and a pair of tweezers. Her performance becomes deliberately flat. She loses inflection. Her eyes go wide, not with fear, but with the inability to process irrelevant human stimuli. It is a risky, minimalist performance that could have been boring, but Johansson’s natural charisma makes the transformation hypnotic.
Upon its release in late July 2014, Lucy defied expectations. Produced on a budget of approximately $40 million, the film opened to a massive $43 million weekend in North America, unseating Hercules .
Globally, it was a juggernaut, gross