Visually exhilarating and well acted, yet I felt it missed the mark to make it a really thought-provoking and substantial film.

Rating: 7/10 (10 April 2011)

Visually exhilarating and well acted, yet I felt it missed the mark to make it a really thought-provoking and substantial film. The idea behind Limitless is simple and in itself extremely intriguing. What if there was a pill you could take that would make you capable of anything without feeling any kind of negative emotions like stress or anxiety, would you take it without knowing the full consequences? Pretty cool idea right and one of those questions that could be debated over for hours and Limitless does a decent job with the overall premise but I felt it didn't quite go far enough into the morality and the humanity of taking such a pill and focused instead too much on the entertaining aspects such as paranoia, making tons of money, being witty and charming, etc.
Bradley Cooper stars as Eddie Morra, a failure of a writer, recently dumped, and insanely depressed, who surprisingly runs into an old friend who gives him this special pill, NZT, that can access the remaining parts of your brain that lay dormant. This essentially is all you need to know (unfortunately the trailers pretty much tell you most of the film anyway) in order to understand what is going on. He starts to write, succeed with women, make millions, etc. all the while taking the pill, that is until some of his prior bad decisions as well as side effects of the pill start showing up.
The direction, done by Neil Bruger (One of his past films is The Illusionist, if you haven't seen it I highly recommend it), is very well done, making Limitless one of the more visually, psychologically compelling films I've seen. He captures the feeling of the pill very well on screen and really excels as a director during a lot of the fast paced sequences. Leslie Dixon wrote the screenplay and deserves a lot of credit because it is mainly a dialogue driven film, however it is probably fair to assume that all of the credit goes to Alan Glynn who wrote the novel which this based on. However, where she faults is with the overall story itself. She at times seems like she can't figure out if she wants to write a film about the drug and what you can do with the drug, or the consequences of taking such a drug and the moral and human issues that come along with it. Dixon does succeed however with her dialogue, which is fast, witty, always entertaining, and who better to deliver than Bradley Cooper.
Cooper is excellent as Eddie Morra and if there was any doubt that he could lead a film he's wiped it all away with this. He plays both sides of the character very well, the failure and the successful side and shows that he can not only do the comedy, fast talking, witty character that we all know he can do, but he can also pull off the dramatic side as well. As for DeNiro, he only shows up so that an older audience will go to see it. He plays a pretty important role, but not one that needs the acting chops of someone like Robert DeNiro (however maybe this is just more proof that he's slipping and is losing what he once was). Abbie Cornish also shows up as Eddie Morra's girlfriend throughout the movie, and is one of the character's I wish would have been present more on screen, mainly to help with what I thought was the only fault of the entire film.
What Limitless lacks is the debate between what would people do if there was a drug that could help you accomplish your wildest dreams. The idea of a drug being able to do that is never really discussed nor is the idea of addiction, what it means for people around you, all the things that are usually brought up in a drug film. And what a better film to discuss these questions than with a story about a drug that makes you and your ideas, excuse the obvious use of the title but, limitless. What an awesome question of humanity, what if you could be perfect? How much time would you hesitate to try the pill, what would you do to get more, etc? Some of these questions are briefly touched upon and answered but not to the depth that they deserve. Instead the film aims to please the masses, with entertaining yet mentally boring action and dialogue. To make matters slightly worse, the ending doesn't help. Your left with a couple of pretty big questions and it leaves you hanging. However, I did like the ending and always will take a film that ends unconventionally and you wanting more than one that wraps everything up nicely and sends you on your way. It's one of those endings where as soon as the credits role your left discussing what you think happened, which in my book is a success. If you can get people talking about your film, and not just what scene they liked the best, or what song was in it, but a real conversation about the story, that is a huge accomplishment and one I hope to see more film makers try to do.