Jagged little pill

LIMITLESS (2011)

Limitless starts off very well, with a lot of promise. A struggling novelist, Eddie Morra (Bradley Cooper) is in a mess. His girlfriend (Abbie Cornish) dumps him and he is broke. He then bumps into his ex-wife's brother who is a drug dealer. He gives him a pill called NZT which makes a man kind of invincible. The brain, of which we all use only 20 per cent, this pill can let you access 80. Basically, you get superpowers.

He writes his novel in 4 days. The publisher loves it. He starts making a lot of money. The shy under-confident fellow has suddenly become so confident that he can do just about anything under the sun. Except fly, maybe. Gotta leave something for Superman. But then he has an epiphany (after he jumps into the sea which a sane man would never do) that this isn't what he really wants to do, he wants something more in his life. Success in career and love isn't all. Now I'm interested as a viewer. Instead of the film really taking off from then on. It, sadly, came crashing down. Till here, the film was intriguing. I'm not a fan of slick editing and too energetic for its own good kind of cinematography but I was still interested in this film for the first hour.

Now either the original novelist, Alan Glynn on whose novel this film is based, who I presume is a stoner, wants to rationalize his drug addiction to himself and to the world or he really thinks drugs are good. I can't believe a bad story like this was picked up for a film. 

Now before I go into those, let me say something to Neil Burger and Bradley Cooper. You do not, I say it again, you do NOT make a person like Bradley Cooper (even if he's acting) talk like the way he did to Robert De Niro in the last scene of this film. This is a film sin. It isn't allowed! You can't make Robert De Niro look bad like that. Especially by an actor like Bradley Cooper who is nothing in front of him. Bradley Cooper has always failed to impress me, he is the definition of a mediocre actor. Abbie Cornish on the other hand is my new actress crush. She floored me in Bright Star (2009) but I wanted to give her one more film. Even in a ridiculous film like this one, she held her own and is oh so pretty.

Getting back to the film. I'm all for anti-heroes. Likable bad guys. Or even unlikable bad guys, unlikable good guys. But the hypocrisy and the sheer ignorance of the character of Eddie Morra is atrocious. I just can't look past the shallow ideology the film perpetrates. Instead of really delving into what a magic pill like this could do, the ramifications of being a superhero in the real world, the film decides to go in the opposite direction and not follow up on the interesting premise. I wouldn't say I was bored throughout the film. But it didn't give me anything by the end of it, neither an intellectual exercise (at least they should have tried to make us use 21% per cent of our brain) or an insight into the human condition. It's like a roller coaster ride that doesn't thrill but nauseates. And I'm not even saying that because of the dizzy visual trickery. I'm also not complaining about the two murders that have no function in the story.

Rating: ** out of ****