This week’s movie releases

After Nikita, León: The Professional and The Fifth Element, French filmmaker Luc Besson creates another strong female action hero in thriller Lucy. Scarlett Johansson stars as the titular femme fantastique, an American living in Taiwan who’s tricked into becoming a drug mule by her mob henchman boyfriend. But when the bag of narcotics forcibly sewn inside her stomach breaks, she starts to develop superpowers – superior physical and mental abilities, telepathy, telekinesis, resistance to pain – and sets out to wreak revenge. Morgan Freeman plays the scientist whose research could help save her from the drug’s perilous side effects.

After heading back to school in goofy comedy thriller 21 Jump Street, undercover detectives Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill are back for more in 22 Jump Street. With their headquarters now moved across the road – seemingly for the purposes of the title alone – this time round the pair head back to college to bust another narcotics network, the suppliers of a deadly drug known as “WHYPHY.” Based on the more straightly played TV series that helped launch the career of Johnny Depp, this sequel also features appearances by Peter Stormare, Ice Cube, Queen Latifah, Anna Faris and Seth Rogen.

Cleverly staged entirely inside its main character’s car, British writer-director Steven Knight’s Locke stars Tom Hardy (Bane from The Dark Knight Rises) as a man who finds his perfect life unraveling over the course of a two-hour drive. The plot unfolds through a series of phone calls with his colleagues, wife and children, as he attempts to juggle pressing work, family and other commitments. Ruth Wilson, Olivia Colman and Tom Holland are among those lending their vocal talents.

Heist society

The Nut Job is a heist movie with a difference, namely that its main character is a purple squirrel called Surly who plans an audacious raid on a nut store only to wind up mixed up in something deeper. Director Peter Lepeniotis’s animated action comedy features the voices of Will Arnett, Brendan Fraser, Gabriel Iglesias, Jeff Dunham, Liam Neeson and Katherine Heigl, though, sadly, reviews have not been kind.

Hard to believe, but Step Up: All In is the fifth installment in the popular dance series and unites several of the stars of the previous movies for a big competition in Las Vegas.