FILM REVIEW Limitless

HIGH FLYERS Robert De Niro (left) and Bradley Cooper star in ‘Limitless’.

Once he pops (a pill), he can’t stop


Cinema
Daniel Carey

AMONG the skills which Phil Connors (Bill Murray) acquires during ‘Groundhog Day’ is an ability to play the piano. Forced to live the same day over and over again until he gets it exactly right, the TV weatherman decides to learn an instrument. Because the piano, as I know only too well, is not the kind of thing you can master in three days.
Unless, that is, you’re Eddie Morra, Bradley Cooper’s under-the-influence protagonist in ‘Limitless’, the new movie from director Neil Burger based on a novel by Irishman Alan Glynn. Eddie has discovered a wonder drug which allows him to access all of his brain – not just the 20 per cent most people utilise.
A talent for tinkling the ivories isn’t the only thing Eddie gets from his magic pill. Having struggled with a severe case of writer’s block, it allows him to finish a book in four days. He picks up any foreign language he overhears, gets back with his long-suffering girlfriend, and ditches writing to concentrate on playing the market. “I suddenly knew everything – about everything,” he explains. “A tablet a day and what I could do with my day became limitless.”
Asked by wonderfully-named business tycoon Carl Van Loon (Robert De Niro) what the secret of his new-found success is, Eddie replies – to general amusement: “Medication.” He doesn’t, he says confidently, have delusions of grandeur – he has “an actual recipe for grandeur.”
But the drug, known as NZT (not to be confused with NCT), has worrying side-effects, and Eddie is playing with fire. There are increasing gaps in his day which he can’t account for, and the solution to his problems may also be driving him to violence. But he can’t come off it either, as he feels wretched without it. He’s being followed by a man he doesn’t know, finds himself threatened by a Russian gangster, and finds out that he’s not the only person to have risen from obscurity with the help of a tablet.



With and without NZT, Eddie is like the ‘before and after’ subject of an advertisement on a shopping channel. The film is visually dazzling at times, as trippy sequences help put us inside his head. Cooper is well cast in the ‘Jekyll and Hyde’-type lead role too. Somehow, he gives us a character which many people will root for despite the fact that he’s clearly ‘cheating’ in the game of life. Those involved in the picture are clearly using a larger percentage of their brains than one sees deployed for the average popcorn thriller. They’ve come up with a thought-provoking head-trip.
Some cinema-goers may be baffled, however, by the focus on Wall Street which elbows its way into the narrative. If you had access to unlimited information, would you really spend your days buying stocks and shares? Members of the audience may congratulate themselves on working certain things out much quicker than Eddie, though the ending – while unexpected – didn’t sit right with me.
While effectively mixing drama, comedy and action, ‘Limitless’ is not quite as clever as it thinks it is. Some of the leaps in logic are – if you’ll pardon the pharmaceutical metaphor – a little hard to swallow. But Burger wisely keeps the pedal to the medal, and you may find yourself able to ignore the absurdities and enjoying the ride. It’s certainly a fun one.
Just for the record, at no stage during the flick can the 2 Unlimited song ‘No Limit’ be heard. Whether you regard its absence as a good or a bad thing is entirely a matter of personal taste.

Rating 6 out of 10