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Drugs are bad, mkay? Except when they aren’t. As bad for you, I should add. Science suggests that we only use something like 15% of our brain’s potential at any given time (or maybe throughout our lifetime). What a waste. It’s a tragedy; a crime against our selves caused by ourselves. Playing a little game of ‘What if?’ with the audience, director Neil Burger (The Illusionist) presents a situation in which a pill unlocks real human potential and, offering a twist, suggest the real human potential becomes the addiction – not the drug. Although easily ripped apart by logic if studied too long, Limitless is an agreeable and frenetic trip down the Matrix-light rabbit hole.
Based on 2001’s The Dark Fields written by Alan Glynn, Bradley Cooper plays struggling writer Edward Morra, a man who looks to be in the throes of depression. Pale, unwashed, and unkept, it is soon revealed that, while Eddie does have a residence in New York City, everything in his world is falling apart. He can’t focus on anything for longer than a minute; he can’t get over his writer’s block and is missing deadlines left and right; he’s recently been dumped by his girlfriend Lindy (Abbie Cornish) and his contact with people is unimpressive and a bit strange.
That is until he bumps into his ex-brother-in-law Vernon Gant (Johnny Whitworth). The differences between the two are interesting enough. One, a struggling writer, and the other, a former drug dealer turned freelance pharmaceutical pimp. It’s a casual enough encounter, yet when Vernon offers Eddie a pill (NZT, he calls it) to help access 100% of Eddie’s drained brain functions (instead of the normal 15%), Eddie can’t resist temptation’s call.
As a result, he finishes the book in two days. His world is suddenly electric, buzzing, and completely alive. Eddie is at the top of his game and he wants more NZT.
Which brings him to Vernon’s apartment. Once inside, he realizes that Vernon has been killed and assumes it was a drug deal gone really, really bad. Inspired by the mess around him, Eddie searches the apartment and finds a stash of money and NZT. Eddie uses the money to make even more money while on NZT and, his insightful actions with stocks and bonds, earns him the attention of famed businessman Carl Van Loon (Robert DeNiro) and, on the opposite side of the spectrum, Russian mafia thug, Gennady (Andrew Howard). With his supply running out and the complications of NZT wrecking havoc on his body and his life, Eddie finds himself running on empty away from everyone…
There’s a frenetic look to the glossy sleek photography through Limitless which is highly imaginative and sort of wonderful all in its own right. It’s fully engaged and doesn’t back off of that expression. At all. Even when the script – written by Leslie Dixon – gets gassed by its own narcotics, Jo Willems intoxicating handling of the camera gives it the mojo to get by. Yet, with a movie as adrenaline fueled as Limitless is, the fact of science isn’t the rational to judge it by. Movement is. Furious is the pace and fury it delivers. Momentum. Handing it out like candy at Halloween.
Cooper absolutely delivers a firecracker performance of morphing capabilities, proving his leading man competence, throughout the twisting maze of addiction verses reality in Limitless and, while the film is never as smart as you want it to be, it certainly makes for insult-free entertainment.
With its futureshock vibe and uber-sleek visual appeal, Limitless amps up its own addiction by making the human mind the agent of withdrawal. In other words, it’s a guilty pleasure.
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for thematic material involving a drug, violence including disturbing images, sexuality and language.
