The flashy, fun-loving Limitless is a Faustian tale for the pharmaceutical age: what if a drug could simultaneously light up the other 80% of brainpower we proverbially go without at any given moment? According to Limitless—based on Alan Glynn's 2001 novel The Dark Fields—a man of average intelligence could suddenly have it all...at a price, of course. And what one does with such power remains the ultimate moral measure of a man or woman. As Maxwell Smart used to say, "If only he had used his genius for niceness instead of evil."
Alas, that's not the case for Eddie Morra (Bradley Cooper), an anti-hero who is, sad to say, an Everyman for the waning American age of conspicuous consumption. A failed New York City writer riding out the last days of a book contract he's doomed not to fulfill, Eddie finds that when the door of his girlfriend Lindy (Abbie Cornish) closes, another promptly opens. Door #2 holds Eddie's ex-brother-in-law Vernon (Johnny Whitworth), who offers Eddie a supposedly FDA-approved pill called NZT (street value: $800 a pop) that has the power to activate 100% of the brain. It doesn't take too hard of a sell to get Eddie to accept the pill, which succeeds in getting him laid and his house cleaned in a matter of hours, not to mention his novel written in just four days.
Eddie's supply hinges on the first in a series of dead bodies that come in the bargain. Quickly, he applies his newfound mental powers to reaching the top of the Wall Street world, but as we all learned on the playground, the king of the hill must defend his position from all comers, from loan-shark muscle to the agents of the pill's shadowy source to tycoon Carl Van Loon (Robert De Niro), who hires Eddie as counsel for a giant merger but never stops warily sizing up his lucrative human acquisition. Eddie's newfound fortune—enjoyed in the bedroom (having won back Lindy) and the boardroom—threatens to come crashing down if he fails to maintain his supply of NZT and, even more worryingly, if he does: turns out the pill has some nasty side effects.
Limitless doesn't add up terribly well, but director Neil Burger (The Illusionist) plunges into the material at such a headlong pace and with sufficient adrenalized style (Fight Club being an obvious narrative and visual touchstone) as to propel this essentially trashy thriller and distract from the abundant loose ends. Cooper is well cast as the ever-desperate, ever-selfish Eddie (screenwriter Leslie Dixon smartly has him ask us, "What would you do?", a rebuke to the holier-than-thou), and the visuals are gifts that keep on giving, from the conceit of NZT sharpening and brightening existence to its runaway rabbit-hole effect when the drug turns on its user. The plot's final chess moves may not entirely convince, either, but they do take a satirical bite of the apple with the suggestion that, while money may be everything, knowhow is the key to the vault.
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