“Of all the useless relationships better forgotten and put away in mothballs is there any more useless than the ex-brother-in-law?” asks Eddie Morra, a failed writer with dust-dangled, pony-tailed hair and a three-day stub. In about a minute Eddie’s perception will change and he will be hooked on an experimental performance enhancing drug called NZT that will unlock everything from the depths of his mind.
Eddie will recall passages of boring books he flicked through, construct attention-grabbing conversations from half-heard arguments from who knows when and master a jumble of self-defense techniques from Bruce Lee to street brawling. In an instant, he will become Neo from The Matrix (1999) or John Travolta from Phenomenon (1996). Suddenly Math will make sense, until the cliché of any memory-boosting drug kicks in: Eddie will start having blackouts and die.
But before that, he will do what any hot-blooded man of the 21st century will do if he suddenly gets the clarity of intelligence: he will woo women, learn languages in a day or two, master stock trading (and make millions) and finally complete that damn novel.
To make sure we see what we hear (Eddie recurrently talks to us as Limitless’ narrator, simplifying every small detail), we see words falling everywhere in his dingy Chinatown apartment, as he writes at the speed of a professional typist, thanks to NZT and the miracle of seamless (and non-threatening) CGI.
Falling words are just the tip of the special effects in the film. Walls become flickering boards displaying statistical numbers and the city is bent into hyper-real reality as a camera continuously zooms through street-level New York. When not zooming around NY, we pan around panorama-like rooms and see three or four instances of Eddie working in time lapse. Clearly we’ve seen effects like this before. Here they prove a point; albeit dramatically. Even at the consequence of sounding corny, the effects in Limitless bombard the senses at just the right frequency.
Exuberant, but never botchy, director Neil Burger — who showed a splendid sleight of hand in The Illusionist (2006) — understands the urgency of a brightly-paced, pumped-up, present-day narrative.
Just to make sure we’re on our toes here, the screenplay by Leslie Dixon (Mrs. Doubtfire, The Heartbreak Kid and Hairspray) tosses everything in, including the kitchen sink: a half-baked homicide angle, a Russian gangster who wants his loan back, Eddie’s unresolved cling to his ex-wife (Anna Friel) and a sensible girlfriend (Abbie Cornish) who has about as much screen time as the film’s big (and not so mean) industrial mogul (Robert DeNiro).
DeNiro (good, but not spectacular) and Cornish (as appealing as she was in Bright Star) provide bearably enough cushion to make Eddie’s human angle work. Their little padding comes in small pockets and is forgotten as soon as their scenes are over because Limitless’ actual engine is the spin of Eddie’s life.
Perhaps there isn’t a better lead for this type of material than Bradley Cooper who fits the mold of the ordinary loser-Joe pumped by a fictitious, untested medicine. Cooper is a smart, handsome jerk whose just-about averageness sticks up for itself as he swings from being a pitiable loser to a despicable winner. Funny thing though, with his unblinking blue-eyed stare and a bewildered smile, Cooper never actually veers that far from his initially established character; he is never totally pitiable or despicable.
My fellow critic for Second opinion briefly mentioned the film as Nicolas Cage material. Cage may have been a good, as well as an odd choice for this role; but then again, if that would have happened, Limitless may have turned out to be a different film altogether.
Released by Relativity Media, Limitless is based on the sci-fi/techno-thriller novel The Dark Fields by Alan Glynn. Rated PG-13, there are two scenes of brief violence, sexuality and a lot of fictional drug-taking.