In an appropriate bit of movie placement, the trailer for Hangover2 was shown at the screening of Neil Burger's new film Limitless . Hangover , that men-will-be-boys comedy, was the unlikely smash-hit that shot to unlikely fame, Limitless ' hero Bradley Cooper.
Limitless is seen as the litmus test of whether Cooper has the acting chops to be a legitimate leading man. A picture caption in the U.K.'s The Guardian summed up the perceived Cooper dilemma: “Somewhere between not good-looking enough and not odd-looking enough…” Well, if the Limitless role description was for “a shallow but likeable loser who uses the opportunity to turn his life around to become a shallow but likeable winner”, Cooper nails the part.
We're introduced to slick Eddie Morra (Cooper) teetering atop his plush apartment tower, in the milliseconds before he will seemingly take the plunge to oblivion. Flashback to a grungy Eddie who's the resident of a none-too-clean Chinatown apartment. He's the walking poster for Loser Writer; though he says it's writer's block, you sense other failures lurking about him. Including a past failed marriage to Melissa (Anna Friel), as his successful girlfriend Lindy (Abbie Cornish) notes, while breaking up with him. Being dumped by Lindy isn't the proverbial rockbottom thud that reboots Eddie's life; rather, it's the perfect setup that allows Eddie to run into his ex-brother-in-law Vernon (Johnny Whitworth).
Vernon gives him a transparent pill, which we later learn is an experimental drug called NZT. Popping NZT literally transforms his brain. It's that pop mantra of how folks only use 20 per cent of their brain; NZT enables Eddie to use all of it. Real doctors will groan in protest, but who cares about medical accuracy when you can play with such a seductive idea?
NZT propels Eddie on a dizzying jaunt that allows him, in a few days, to finish writing his book, learn multiple languages, bash up bad guys and make millions on the stock exchange. Activities, which bring him into the orbit of two dangerous men — a top Wall Street financier (Robert De Niro) and a Russian hoodlum (Andrew Howard).
Director of photography Jo Willems adds to the razzmatazz with hyperkinetic camera swoops through New York streets to indicate the blurring of time, for example, or the brightening of colours when NZT kicks in. We're reminded of a much darker film, Requiem for a Dream , which also used visual devices to communicate the blood-pumping-high experienced by characters shooting up.
Limitless is a much sunnier energy blast injected into our neural pathways. Directed by Neil Burger, and based on a script adapted by Leslie Dixon from Alan Glynn's novel “The Dark Fields”, the narcissistic plot is smartly buzzy, and its leading man effortlessly slick. Sure, it's shallow — here's a guy given the brainpower to tackle stuff like world peace and space flight; instead he primarily uses his new powers to get sex, money and jet-setting friends.
Not that the breakneck plot allows you time to ponder the inconsistencies, you're mostly aware of the logic gaps after the high has worn off.
Limitless
Genre: Action-Fantasy
Director: Neil Burger
Cast: Bradley Cooper, Robert De Niro, Abbie Cornish
Storyline: An experimental drug allows a failed author to transform into a successful guy who knows everything
Bottomline: Trippy thriller that's well worth a watch
