"Limitless" Has It's Limits, But Not Many

Rating: 8/10 (12 December 2011)

This film really caught my attention. "Limitless" is the story of Eddie, a writer who is lazy, just got dumped by his girlfriend, and almost broke. When his ex-wife's brother see's him, he decides to use Eddie as a guinea pig for a new drug called NZT, which enhances brain capacity to 100%. Instantly addicted, Eddie gains a whole new life perspective and goes on a self-improvement spree, if you will.
Due to his new brain power, he can memorize everything and for what he wants to do, he needs serious money, so he starts by analyzing the stock market and becomes the biggest expert broker in New York. But after a while in the limelight, he has no more NZT, so he starts doing desperate things to get some. He makes enemies with a Russian loan shark who steals a pill of NZT, not knowing what it is, and now forces Eddie to give him more.
As Eddie goes through his new life, he gets his girlfriend back, but soon, negative effects from the NZT such as black outs wear him down. Now Eddie has to find a way to keep his new life together so he doesn't have to go back to being a bum.
The film is more of a thriller than anything. Little action, a bit of humour, but it's like "Doctor Who" humour, with him being so smart he out-thinks everyone and makes them look like idiots.
There are no effects what so ever. But there is some action. There's a part where the Russian's gang breaks into Eddies house looking for NZT. There's a shoot-out, and to see Eddie's mind racing is great fun.
There's another fight scene that was kinda unnecessary but it's cool nonetheless. After a blackout caused by the NZT, Eddie's inside the subway, and he bumps into some gang member. The gang huddles around and goes to beat him up, but by remembering moves in Bruce Lee movies and instructional self defence video's, he learns how to fight in seconds. He beats the hell out of the gang members, but it doesn't look like he's a pro fighter. It looks like what it's supposed to be: he's copying. Analyze and Interpret.
The end has to be addressed cause it's where the film falls. After one point, it pull's a Season 2 "Battlestar Galactica" finale and skips ahead a year. Now Eddie is running for the Mayor's office, his book is out, and he's happy as can be.
Van Loon shows up and reveals he knew Eddie was taking NZT and threatens that Eddie's drug labs just got shut down, but Eddie's become so smart by this point, he knows they haven't been.
Eddie reveals to having fine tuned the NZT formula, and knows that Van Loon's company is in the toilet, so any threats are pointless. I was expecting some last action scene, but it's just verbal confrontation. Van Loon drives away after being totally burned, and Eddie goes to meet his girlfriend for lunch. They sit down at a restaurant, he speaks a foreign language to an Asian waiter, and then just says "What?" to his girlfriend after she stares at him. And then the movie just ends. Like seriously? That's it? No final shoot-out? Nothing? Just "What"? It's such a bad ending that it leaves you feeling unsatisfied.
The film is good. Mind you, it has flaws, but to see this bum writer go from Hobo to God is a highly interesting concept. Everything he does have consequences, and hearing his voice-overs, hearing his thoughts and how he deals with all this, is the most interesting part, I believe. Make a sequel to this. I wanna see more stuff you can do with this magic brain pill.
Anyway, I recommend this to anyone who likes interesting plots and mind-bends. If you're looking for an action movie, it'll satisfy you a little, but not as much as if you watched, say "Rambo". Good film, terrible ending.