Limitless

Parts of the new thriller "Limitless" are exciting; other parts are familiar or fuzzy-headed, and the movie takes a rather more enthusiastic view of its fictional brain pill than did the original author, Dubliner Alan Glynn, whose novel "The Dark Fields" served as the film's basis.

But almost all of it works as wish-fulfillment fantasy.

A sleek black comedy built for speed, it's about a pill that, when ingested, makes you the smartest person in any given room. (In other words, it's a metaphor for the recreational cocaine era of the 1980s.) Would a healthy supply of such pills transform you into a hero or a jerk?

Bradley Cooper plays the initially hapless, and then superhumanly gifted, Manhattan novelist and stock market wizard.

Halfway between heroism and jerkdom: This is where Cooper's sweet spot lies.

The actor's confidence (or arrogance, depending on your perspective) has a way of getting an audience on his side against an audience's better judgment. Cooper qualifies as a fairly sudden sort of movie star, having been boosted into theoretical box-office reliability by the success of "The Hangover." Armed with super-blue eyes and a blinding smile, he brings to the screen an aura of "Get outta my spotlight, or I'll have my goons make you get out." Yet Cooper's an able light comic performer as well as a shrewd dramatic actor, and "Limitless" lets him run considerable distances in both directions.

The novelist, Eddie, owes his editor a book, which he fails to produce in his drab little rental in New York City's Chinatown. His girlfriend, played by Abbie Cornish (lately of "Bright Star"), has put up with a lot of frustration and, early on, dumps his sorry behind. By chance Eddie runs into his ex-brother-in-law, who slips Eddie a pill by the name of NZT. Alakazam! Fortunes can be made overnight. Languages can be learned in a day or two. Women can be pleasured with exceptional finesse, because Eddie read something in some magazine years ago and poof, there it is, drawn from the recesses of his memory as if by pharmaceutical magic.

Eddie scores in the market, so well that Wall Street mogul Carl Van Loon (Robert de Niro) demands a partnership. The drug, Eddie's new best friend, comes with some side effects including dementia, blackouts and death. But without them, without the Jekyll-and-Hyde personality changes Eddie undergoes and without the Russian gangster (Andrew Howard) bent on payback for his initial loan to Eddie, "Limitless" would be a premise, not a feature.

Director Neil Burger uses endless forward-zoom effects and 360-degree panoramic spins to put us behind Eddie's eyes when he's on the drug. "I don't have delusions of grandeur," Eddie says at one point. "I have an actual recipe for grandeur." Screenwriter Leslie Dixon has done a smart and often witty job in distilling the novel down to movie form.

I wish it didn't get quite so movie-stupid toward the end, with the violence. And I wish it had the guts to stay tough-minded. The film celebrates reckless, charming visionaries who say things like, "We're wired to overreach." The book had its opinion on such self-aggrandizement. The movie comes to a different conclusion.

But it's fun getting there.

 

     RSS

 

"Limitless" Movie Trailer

 

MPAA rating: PG-13 (for thematic material involving a drug, violence including disturbing images, sexuality and language).

Running time: 1:45.

Cast: Bradley Cooper (Eddie Morra); Robert de Niro (Carl Van Loon); Abbie Cornish (Lindy); Anna Friel (Melissa); Andrew Howard (Gennady).

Credits: Directed by Neil Burger; written by Leslie Dixon, based on the novel "The Dark Fields" by Alan Glynn; produced by Dixon, Scott Kroopf and Ryan Kavanaugh. A Relativity Media release.

 

more MOVIE REVIEWS ...

Recent Movie Reviews - Films in Theaters

Jane Eyre

Jane Eyre
Mia Wasikowska and Michael Fassbender

The moody, well-acted new adaptation of Charlotte Bronte's novel honors the source material. What makes Jane Eyre worth watching, for starters, is Wasikowska. Bronte's Jane is bullied, beaten, humiliated and marginalized by her guardians and the wider world around her. Then she arrives at Thornfield Hall and her destiny

 

The Lincoln Lawyer

The Lincoln Lawyer
Matthew McConaughey and Marisa Tomei

The Lincoln Lawyer gives Matthew McConaughey his due, a role that plays right into his wheelhouse, a slick, hustling lawyer. But what game can Mick (McConaughey) run when he is hired by Beverly Hills money to defend a very rich and seemingly quite dangerous young man who insists on his innocence? Mick quickly realizes he's in over his head

 

Copyright © 2011 Tribune Media Services, Inc.