Starring: Bradley Cooper, Abbie Cornish and Robert DeNiro
Directed By: Neil Burger
Written By: Leslie Dixon, based on a novel by Alan Glynn
Produced By: Leslie Dixon, Ryan Kavanaugh and Scott Kroopf
Distributor: Relativity Media
Rating: PG-13
Running Time: Approximately 105 minutes
Website: iamrogue.com/limitless
Budget: $35 million
Genre: Action, Science Fiction
Release Date: March 18, 2011
It sounds like a movie made on a dare, after a late night imbibing substances one probably shouldn’t : “You know how, like, you only use a small percentage of your brain? What if you could use, like, ALL OF IT?” “Dude, you know what? That should totally be a movie.”
Dude. Limitless is that movie, based on novelist Alan Glynn’s “The Dark Fields.” Bradley Cooper (The Wedding Crashers, The A-Team) plays Eddie Morra, a down-on-his-luck, would-be writer whose girlfriend, Lindy (Bright Star’s Abbie Cornish), has just dumped him. Making matters worse is the severe writer’s block he’s suffering in the face of a looming deadline.
A chance encounter with his slimy ex-brother-in-law (Johnny Whitworth) puts Eddie in contact with a translucent, highly illegal, most definitely untested pill called NZT. The science is, of course, gobbledygook, but the pill expands and enhances neural pathways and gives its user total recall of everything they’ve ever seen, touched, or consumed, in addition to a rapacious new learning capacity. When the former brother-in-law turns up dead, Eddie comes into the world’s largest and only NZT supply, allowing him to turn his manuscript in in record time and have a series of random sexual encounters before using his newfound sophistication to try to woo back Lindy. Naturally wanting to use his talents to accrue as much wealth and influence as possible, Eddie uses his ability to learn and adapt to any new situation to become a stock market wiz, a move that puts him in the public spotlight and brings him into the orbit of Carl Van Loon (Robert DeNiro), a business tycoon with a vested interest in using Eddie’s prodigious talents. It isn’t long before he’s canoodling with New York’s rich and powerful. But Eddie has started to get these headaches, and he’s blacking out sometimes, and who is that strange man following him…?
For the most part, Limitless does a good job of exploring Eddie’s motives and the possibilities of what happens when with great power comes no responsibility. Eddie (like most writers) starts off pure but goes off the rails once corrupted by power and influence – and drugs, let’s not forget the drugs. The movie suffers from some detours into action movie territory – namely a chase through the park and a subplot with a dimwitted Russian gangster that leads to a climax more suited to a Quentin Tarantino or Joe Carnahan movie than this one. If Eddie was all that smart, he would have known the phrase Russian gangster was enough warning to stay away. Instead, we get a bloody, brutal finale that in isolation is pretty thrilling, but feels out of pace with a film whose major focus had been the wish-fulfillment of what is essentially getting super powers.
If Limitless, ironically, tones down the potential of its premise in favor of generic thriller-style twists and turns, it remains a surprisingly spry and enjoyable movie, no small feat for a film that features the exciting world of day trading and corporate mergers as a major plot thread. Cooper, far from generic movie-jerk roles and belying his leading man looks, turns in a convincing performance as Eddie turns from chump to champ. DeNiro, still in his late-period acting malaise, looks a bit like his old self in the small role of Carl Van Loon – comfortably curmudgeonly as a Trump-style corporate shark. There’s the nagging feeling that Limitless could have been more in different or more creative hands, but even with the distinct sheen of Hollywood tinkering, it’s probable that the movie, like Eddie himself, will win over more than a few audiences by sheer charm alone.
3 Stars
