Limitless - a film review

Limitless:

Relativity Media

Directed by: Neil Burger

Screenwriter: Leslie Dixon

Cast: Bradley Cooper, Robert De Niro, Abbie Cornish, Johnny Whitworth, Andrew Howard

Bradley Cooper headlines a down and out New York writer (Eddie Morra) who is suffering from monumental writers’ block – he hasn’t written a single word of his long overdue novel and bumps into his ex-brother-in-law (Johnny Whitworth) who gives him a sample of a new drug called NZT that fires up the synapses and makes his brain work at 100% capacity.

Immediately after taking the first pill Eddie winds up cracking out his novel in a matter of days and this gives him an intro to the limitless possibilities of NZT. He learns to play the piano in a matter of hours, he can recall anything he has ever seen or heard which gives him the ability to fight like Bruce Lee and speak any language he wants to. Eddie quickly realises that his genius intellect is wasted on writing books alone so he enters the investment game and accumulates millions of dollars in a few days, this attracts a lot of attention from some of the major players and this is where he meets financial mogul Carl Van Loon (Robert Deniro). Carl uses Eddie’s vision to predict stock prices and strategizes a deal for a merger in a Fortune 500 company. There is a catch however: Once the pill wears off Eddie crashes back into his former self.

Limitless is driven by the typical Hollywood scenario of the villain trying to bring the hero down and yes there are holes in the plot however it gets away with it because of the sheer brilliance of Cooper’s performance. It was fascinating to watch Cooper’s transition from complete train wreck to unstoppable bullet train; he has incredible sensitivity as an actor that allows him to merge completely with every archetypal shift.  

Limitless poses the question: What would you do when every single block you have ever perceived to be preventing you from achieving your dreams is gone and you are able to unleash everything simultaneously? It reminds me of something someone said recently: “Things are only impossible until they are not.” Films like this give us a glimpse into aspects of ourselves we have not even contemplated yet.

Whenever I walk out of a cinema I like to look back at the expressions of everyone so I can gauge the whether my perception mirrors theirs. After this we were all in the same energetically charged state and I thought to myself: “This is what filmmaking is all about.”  You could argue this film could have answered more questions as to what we would do when we access all of our brains but sometimes we just want to be ripped out of our reality and be taken for a joy ride.