Concept is fantastic, but execution is flawed.

Rating: 7/10 (29 October 2014)

Limitless tells the story of a disorganized, poor, wannabe-writer loser Bradley Cooper who stumbles upon a drug that makes him super-smart. Suddenly, he can brilliantly achieve any task with lightning speed.
The movie is based on a book, and the entire idea is excellent. You should see Limitless if only for the cool ways it promotes being focused on increasing your mental abilities, and the perks that come with intelligence. Bradley Cooper does some stupendous acting in the main role, the visual and audio direction is awesome, with great special FX. The movie's first third or so is very good overall.
However, after that the movie stumbles repeatedly. The movie's creators/book author prove unequal to the task of writing an uber-genius's thoughts and actions plausibly. Nor can they break out of the mold of action-movie templates and clichés. As a result, and in order to keep the story going, they put the protagonist into trouble that is completely incompatible with his intelligence - which is not only proclaimed, but explicitly shown via various effects of it. They try to write this guy as genius, but unfortunately, he is a genius only when it suits the plot. When the writers need to insert your standard action villain, or other obstacles - the hero's genius conveniently disappears.
To sum up: definitely worth seeing for the concept alone, but by no means the masterpiece it could have been. 7/10.