High Potential Film but Ultimately Feels Directionless

Rating: 7/10 (3 September 2011)

I was tempted to give this film a higher rating because I do think it's better than your average flick. It's a decent thriller but I think my problem is that I can't decide which of the handful of subplots is supposed to be our primary focus. The cast does a great job, but the story seems like it's being pulled in too many directions and, by the end, I'd didn't feel like I'd gotten a satisfying enough conclusion to any of them. Bradley Cooper (THE HANGOVER films, THE A-TEAM) is given a chance to headline his own film based on a novel from Irish author Alan Glynn. Cooper is an aspiring sci-fi writer who's hit rock bottom. He can't pay his rent and his girlfriend's leaving him. He's got a book contract, but he hasn't even brought himself to write a single word. Everything's looking down until his ex-brother-in-law shows up and introduces him to miracle designer drug NZT-48. Users begin to use their brain to the full potential and it's not long before Eddie Morra (Cooper) is using his new mental mastery to play the stock market and act as a consultant for a major business merger, but not without making a few enemies.
LIMITLESS feels like a bunch of miniature related stories, all focused on the character of Eddie Morra, and all rolled into one film. There's Eddie's dependence on NZT-48. If he quits it outright, he'll die like others before him. There is Eddie's involvement in the Van Loon/Atwood merger. Then there's Eddie's failing relationship with his girlfriend Lindy and his involvement with Russian mobster Gennady, who has developed a taste of his own for NZT-48 and won't let Eddie cut him off. There's enough going on here that it probably could've been developed further into a possible television series. Instead he just bounces around between subplots until the end where everything is tied up loosely. The first time I watched it, I wasn't sure which story was to be the primary and assumed it was his involvement with business mogul Carl Van Loon (Robert De Niro). The movie's trailers certainly seemed to paint it that way for me. Instead, the merger is just something going on in the background while Eddie deals with the ever-growing threat of Gennady (Andrew Howard) until the eventual confrontation. I would've preferred if the movie focused on Eddie's meteoric rise in the business world and how he struggles to maintain his new life while fighting to overcome the possibly fatal effects on NZT-48.
I'm always a sucker for a good science fiction film, and LIMITLESS sort of falls into that category with the development of this wonder drug that unlocks your brain's potential. I'm pretty sure the belief that we only use 10% of our brains has been proved wrong already, but I was willing to ignore that since the movie's premise is so appealing. Who wouldn't want a pill that can jack your brain into overdrive, turning you into the ultimate success? I thought Cooper did a great job here, going from disorganized failure to man of the year. I wished De Niro would've had a larger role in the film, perhaps catching on to Cooper's secret early and trying to play it against him. Unfortunately, we get only a tiny bit of that in the final act of the film and it never really gets a chance to get off the ground. I've never read Glynn's "The Dark Fields" on which this movie was based, but the movie's made me curious enough to pick it up in the future. There was a lot of potential in this movie and, while it was a fun movie, I just thought it didn't accomplish as much as it could've.