Well Within Limits

Rating: 4/10 (6 April 2011)

It's frustrating when any work of art -- be it an album of music, a novel, a painting, or a film -- carries a distinct yet maddeningly unplaceable sense of familiarity; when its sources and inspirations bubble exceedingly close to the surface without ever really showing their faces, as if embarrassed by what has been done with their influence. "Limitless" is a film fraught with such familiarity, and as a result, comes nowhere near matching its title. The plot involves disheveled, would-be writer Eddie Mora (the reliably charismatic Bradley Cooper), who has a run-in with a long-unseen cohort, who hooks him up with a transparent, dime-sized drug called NZT. After his first tab, Eddie plows through his novel and becomes a sudden fountain of once-untapped knowledge (the aim of the drug is to free up all the unused, inaccessible space in the human brain); he makes connections up the societal ladder, and eventually uses his expanded headspace to...wait for it...play the Stock Market and make himself filthy rich. This leads him to a position of grace with a powerful corporate mogul played by Robert De Niro (on default mode, as is usually the case these days). As one might predict, what goes up must come down, and the demands of NZT eventually cause Eddie to run afoul of some time-filling Russian mobsters who serve no real purpose other than to shoehorn some overly contrived, plot-desperate conflict into the proceedings. As directed by Neil Burger, "Limitless" is pulp, plain and simple -- alternating between bizarrely jokey voice-over narration, some very cool (if narratively disposable) 'rollercoaster' shots, and dour sermons on the side effects of addiction, all while culminating in an ending that favors convenience over believable logic.