Limitless
Posted on March 17, 2011 at 6:16 pm
B+| Lowest Recommended Age: | High School |
| MPAA Rating: | Rated PG-13 for thematic material involving a drug, violence including disturbing images, sexuality and language |
| Profanity: | Strong language |
| Alcohol/ Drugs: | Plot concerns a performance-enhancing superdrug, |
| Violence/ Scariness: | Some intense and graphic violence |
| Diversity Issues: | None |
| Date Released to Theaters: | March 18, 2011 |
| Date Released to DVD: | July 18, 2011 |
| Amazon.com ASIN: | B0051MKNV8 |
Most of us feel that there must be some way for us to unleash the best version of ourselves. Whole sections of bookstores, whole shelves of vitamins, dozens of infomercials, motivational speakers, and guides to personal growth, self-actualization, and personal and professional success are evidence of the powerful human sense that there must be some trick to getting us out of our own way. So, if someone offered you a pill that would do all that for you, you’d probably be tempted to give it a try.
That’s what happens to Eddie (Bradley Cooper) in this stylish thriller. He’s a guy who feels like a loser. He has yet to write a single word of the book he is supposed to be working on. His girlfriend (Abbie Cornish as Lindy) has dumped him. He lives in a dive and he is out of money and out of ideas. He has just about lost touch entirely with any notion of himself as a person in control, a person on track, a person with a sense of possibility. He runs into his former brother-in-law, who says he has moved on from selling street drugs to selling legal pharmaceuticals and offers him something new and special, a small, circular, clear little performance-enhancing pill. Eddie swallows it.
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It hits him like a combination of Ritalin, steroids, speed, and super-powerful ginkgo biloba. It hits him like spinach hits Popeye, if it grew his brain instead of his muscles. Suddenly, everything makes sense. Eddie has focus, confidence, motivation, clarity. The scales drop from his eyes. Everything makes sense to him, information, numbers, people. He can effortlessly access any information he has ever skimmed over, even if he was unaware of it at the time. He finishes writing his book in four days and it is a masterpiece. He can learn new languages almost instantly. He gets a haircut, cleans up his apartment, starts to work out. He gets Lindy back. He starts investing and the money pours in. A billionaire (Robert De Niro) makes him an offer.
But there’s a problem. Eddie becomes dependent on the drug. He keeps upping his dose and he starts to have black-outs. His ex-wife gives him a shattering glimpse of what it means to go cold turkey. The dealer has been murdered. Eddie has a stash, but no way to get more. Other people know about the drug and they desperately want him to get it for them. Can he out-think other out-thinkers?
Cooper has become one of Hollywood’s most appealing leading men and this movie, which he co-produced, plays to his strengths. If he is not exactly convincing as the pony-tailed mess at the beginning, he has all of the genuine movie star gloss to make the newer, better Eddie look, as Dolly used to sing, better than a body has a right to. Director Neil Burger keeps the movie amped up, making us feel a little wired as we watch. It’s fun to get inside the head of someone working at 500 percent capacity, seeing how he thinks through his options, trying to maintain control internally and externally, balancing the swings between extraordinary powers and terrifying dependence and vulnerability.
Even those of average intelligence to spot the problems Eddie overlooks — or the obvious solution it takes him the entire running time to figure out. But it is still a lot of stylish fun to see Bradley Cooper inhabit the fantasy — and deal with the fallout.
I thoroughly enjoyed this movie despite the fact that my local newspaper critic gave it a lukewarm review. Maybe it’s because Bradley Cooper is immensely likeable, both as a loser and a drug-enhanced winner. But it might also be because the heavy dose of improbability is presented in a way that makes it almost believable.
Thanks, Shary — as you can see, I liked it, too! If you get a chance, watch Bradley Cooper on “Inside the Actor’s Studio.” Very touching and inspiring.
Yes, “Limitless” was fast-paced and entertaining, but even for a Hollywood picture, the last 5 minutes contained such a “bad guy gets everything” tone, that I was more bothered as a parent than I have been in a long time. The first “Wall Street”, “Thank You for Smoking”, “Crimes & Misdemeanors”, even “No Country for Old Men” were movies that portrayed greed and violence within the context of a moral chorus that helped allowed viewers to process the ethics of the circumstance. This was a fairly intelligent film; why not a more thoughtful treatise on the consequences that befall Eddie and the ultimate choices he makes?
Thanks, Kris — I thought the end was more powerful as a cautionary note — if it had resolved things as you suggest, we could have left feeling safe and satisfied. Instead, we leave a little more careful about ourselves and those around us. I think that’s a good message.