Relatively strong story and great plot basis, though with a couple of logic holes.

Rating: 7/10 (23 May 2015)

While there are some holes you can poke in the logic behind this film, the true spirit behind it is: what if. And, let's face it, that question definitely gets answered, maybe not in a one size fits all way, but nonetheless it turns a guy who's down on his luck into an incredibly successful person. Regardless of what you think of the actual story, you can't deny that it's an interesting plot basis. The whole brain access isn't an entirely new idea, as evidenced by the release of Lucy this past year, though that seems to take a more supernatural approach. You could argue that the story is a little haphazard or implausible, but, as Eddie says, "I see fifty scenarios" and unfortunately the movie could only involve one of those fifty.
Even though Abbie Cornish and Robert De Niro are advertised as main characters, they get a pretty limited amount of screen time. Eddie Mora is the only true main character. He's a little eccentric, a little self-centered, more than a little sloppy and perhaps a bit of a slacker. Carl Van Loon (De Niro) ends up becoming a plot engine about halfway through when he hires Eddie, and you might say that he's a form of antagonist. But at the end of the day, he's relatively disposable from Eddie's point of view. I was slightly disappointed with Lindy's (Abbie Cornish) character. She's cast high and is a present figure in Eddie's life, but she is rarely important to the plot and probably deserved a bit more screen time. To make up for this, though, the minor characters are incorporated beautifully. The way Melissa, her brother Vernon, and Gennady (the guy who Eddie goes to before and during\ his stock market surge and ends up on NZT-48) are woven into the plot is great. Not award-winning, but notable. I read a gripe against Eddie's character in another review that said that he never uses his powers to do anything good for medicine or politics. While I see the logic behind this, I would argue that 1) he SPOILER ALERT is in the middle of a campaign at the end, so he's most likely going to be making some kind of political difference, and 2) he's not a superhero and may not have wanted to do anything extraordinarily attention grabbing since he relies almost solely on NZT-48. In that way, maybe Eddie is actually one of the safest people to have use of the pill since, while he doesn't do anything incredibly good with it, he is never really power-hungry or anything like that as someone like Van Loon might be.
The story is probably the spot where you can poke the most holes. It has a couple of tangent story lines for how to keep Eddie on NZT-48 and out of danger. There are a couple of technical holes with how the drug works since, logically, it would give Eddie control over things like his pulse. Gennady ends up being a major plot engine near the end. A lot of act two involves Eddie discovering the dangers and detriments of the pill, mostly through his ex-wife Melissa. One plot thread that I thought was done very well was the one about Eddie having to deal with the effects of murdering that one girl during one of his skips. The ending is questionable since you kind of expect Eddie to end up jumping off the roof of his apartment. I still don't really know how to feel about the ending, because it seems like Eddie gets the easy way out. The characters drive it pretty well, but most people won't be completely satisfied with the story as a whole. One possible upside to the story is that it isn't a save-the-world plot, which it definitely could have been if they wanted to make an action movie out of it. This also accounts for Eddie's provincial use of his powers.
Execution was a pretty big factor here. The presentation of how NZT-48 worked was interesting and visually appealing, though the latter might not apply to the times where Eddie's mind does 18 hour skips. I felt like the voice-over was used very well here, since it gave good exposition and was used throughout. It can be a little irritating when you have that one voice-over monologue at the beginning of the movie and then it never comes back until the end. The acting was pretty solid from everyone, though it wasn't De Niro's best part. The script was pretty strong, and the couple of action sequences were well done, particularly the subway fight.
So for prospective viewers, be conscious that the story might seem a little weak. I don't want to put anything definite on it because it's more a matter of opinion than anything. If you're looking for an interesting plot base, it definitely delivers. The trailer is a pretty good representation of the entire film, which you can't say for every trailer. You definitely want to be serious about watching it and have to worry as little as possible about volume control or external distractions. There are a couple of intense scenes, and one or two that have a possibly nauseating amount of blood in them. I would recommend that you watch it all the way through because you might not like the way it's going at one point, but then the next turn might completely change your mind. Overall Rating: 8.4/10.