Limitless

I've got to stop judging movies before I see them. It makes it so much easier to just assume they're bad or assume they're good. But it is always a nice surprise to watch a movie you KNEW was going to be bad, and end up enjoying it after all.

Bradley Cooper (In his first real starring role, certainly not his last) is Eddie Morra. Eddie lives in New York, has a very attractive girlfriend and he has himself a book deal. Unfortunately he is also a drunk, looks like a hippie and hasn't written a single word of the book he needs to turn in. Bummer. And then his super hot girlfriend breaks up with him. Life isn't looking too good. By chance he runs into his ex-wifes brother Vernon. Vernon offers Eddie a chance with a new pill he deals called NZT. As Vernon explains it, it does something with the receptors in the brain allowing to utilize its full potential. The result is incredible, Eddie is actually smart now. He finishes his book, acts really smart and stops dressing like a hippie. But as soon as it wears off he crashes, hard. He goes to get more from Vernon, but he finds that Vernon has been killed. Eddie steals the stash of NZT he has left and lives the life he has always dreamed. Through different shenanigans Eddie loses his stash and discovers that if he stops taking NZT cold turkey, he will die. So he has to figure out how to get some more whilst juggling a wall street job he smarted his way into with Carl Van Loon (Robert DeNiro). And more than one person wants to kill him because of the NZT he has. Good thing what he can do is limitless (see what I did there?)

I thought Limitless was going to be pretty stupid. And by pretty stupid, I thought it was going to be really really stupid. But it shaped up really well. Bradley Cooper is a fairly entertaining leading man. It was fun, a joy even, to watch him transform from a drunk hippie to a know-it-all douchebag to NZT junkie looking for a fix. It was like watching the first Spiderman. When Peter started discovering the new powers he had, everyone in the audience was thinking the same thing: I want that. When Eddie starts learning new languages and making millions in a day everyone was thinking I want that. It's human instinct to want to be the best at something and Limitless shows that potential beautifully. Every time he is on NZT the color scheme changes in the film. They use an orange filter to make everything brighter when he is enlightened and when he is just a regular guy they use a blue screen that makes everything depressing. It was a very effective tactic.

The climax of Limitless was thrilling and involves a totally gross scene. I saw it coming and I was like "NO DONT DO IT BRADLEY COOPER NOOO" but then he did it anyway and it was disgusting. Even the ending has a twist (sort of) that I did not see coming in any way, shape or form.

I only have one complaint. In the aforementioned climax a blind Russian bad guy shoots his pistol at least 20 times without reloading. Little stuff like that irks me.

Limitless is incredibly entertaining. The kind of film you walk out of the theater and mention to your friends how bad you want NZT right now. Well done filmmakers, I enjoyed myself.

3 out of 4 stars

-Christopher O'Connell