Limitless in Name Only

I went to a packed showing of the lastest non-Hangover movie starring Bradley Cooper, Limitless.  Cooper hit it big at the turn of the century with the TV show Alias.  Then he had a short lived sitcom, Kitchen Confidential.   Finally, after a few small roles in other shows, and a few cameo roles in mainstream cinema, he hit big with The Hangover in 2009.  Ever since, he has struggled to repeat that success.  After box office bombs like The A-Team, All About Steve, and Case 39, I thought he was due for another big hit.  Robert DeNiro is in a similar position.  Lately, he's starred in countless bad movies.  What was his last good movie?  The Good Shepherd?  Or even Meet the Parents?  Considering it has two actors who are due for a successful movie and a creative plot about a drug that unlocks the entire potential of the brain, I thought Limitless would be great.

Limitless opens in the most cliché way possible:  at a climactic scene late in the story.  Our antagonist Eddie Morra (Cooper) is standing on the ledge of a high-rise building, contemplating suicide.  There are loud bangs on his loft’s armored door; gunshots next door.  So then we travel back to the beginning, because starting there is only logical.  Unfortunately, in today’s MTV world, if you don’t draw the audience in within the first thirty seconds, you might as well throw your movie out the window.  We now see a disheveled Eddie walking to a diner where his girlfriend Lindy, played by Abbie Cornish, breaks up with him.  She tells him that she loved him, but that his life is going nowhere.  He unsuccessfully pleads his case about being an author and she is his muse.  Anyway, he is then below down on his luck.  Luckily, he runs into his ex-brother-in-law and drug dealer, Vernon.  Seeing that Eddie could use some help, Vernon gives Eddie a clear pill that will unlock the unused portion of his brain.

Eddie goes home, takes the pill, and the rest is in the trailer.  The pill, NZT, allows you to access everything you have ever known, read and retain everything you lay eyes on, learn foreign languages simply by listening to them, and buy really expensive tailored suits, but no ties.  Ties are for people NOT on the drug.

Eddie crosses paths with a loan shark, a stock broker, many hot women, and finally Carl Van Loon (DeNIro), an investment guru with lots of power.  Van Loon hires Eddie to help him with a merger thanks to the knowledge and deductive reasoning skills the drug has provided.  But, like any drug, there are side effects to NZT.

The rest of the movie follows Eddie as he tries to figure out what is really going on around him while dealing with some of the side effects.  There are plenty of twists to keep the movie moving, but director Neil Burger has too much going on all the time.  It is a visual assault on your eyes.  He basically thinks he is David Fincher but can't quite get it right.  There are aspects of The Game, Fight Club, and even Panic Room scattered throughout the movie.  To make this connection even more apparent,  the composer Paul Leonard-Morgan proved that he has listened to Trent Reznor's Academy Award winning score to The Social Network one too many times.  The music was so loud, and so in your ears, that it became a cacophony.  Combine that with the over-the-top visuals and you have a sensory overload.  I would not have expected this disaster from the writer/director of The Illusionist.  As for the composer, well, this is his first US movie.  His resume is filled with BBC productions and shows.

In the end, Limitless was an entertaining way to spend a few hours, but it was not a great film.  The intriguing premise about a drug that unlocks your brain was lost in all the unnecessary camera shots down the streets, through heads, into the brain, back out, across town, up buildings and so on.  It was a solid 2.5 out of five.  But if you are expecting to hear the Kanye West song, Power, you will be disappointed.