• “Limitless,” Directed by Neil Burger, Many Rivers Productions, 105 minutes, released March 18.
Who wouldn’t jump at the chance to be perfect if it took no work at all? Eddie Morra (Bradley Cooper) gets just such a chance with an experimental medication, NZT, designed to allow him to use 100 percent of his brain. The skeptical writer, failing at both writing and life, leaps at the opportunity and is changed irrevocably. What will Eddie Morra do with his limitless potential? Neil Burger’s glitzy action flick offers up a thought-provoking premise and a promising story, exploring themes of self-control, addiction, and personal improvement in a watch-able, entertaining package.
Morra is losing his long-suffering girlfriend, Lindy (Abbie Cornish), and his book’s going nowhere. He’s let himself go and can’t really seem to get his feet under him. All this changes when he runs into an old acquaintance who offers him a drug that can solve all his problems. Suddenly he can focus like never before, writing more in a few hours than he has in a year. When the pill’s effects wear off after 24 hours, he knows he has to get more. But when his dealer friend suddenly is killed, Eddie is left with a sizable supply of NZT but no prospect of more to come.
With perfect focus, instant recall, and the ability to learn anything in a matter of hours, Eddie on NZT becomes the sort of man he’s always wanted to be — a perfect version of himself. He cleans up his apartment and his life, finishes his book, learns new languages, and acquires an appreciation for art and music, all within days. With an increasing dose of NZT, he parlays a small stake into much more on the stock market, and after rashly borrowing $100,000 from a mobster, rapidly amasses a fortune, garnering the attention of business magnate Carl Van Loon (Robert De Niro).
Eddie’s NZT-fueled life is starting to come apart at the seams, however. He’s won Lindy back, but his exponential doses of NZT are starting to leave him with gaps in his memory, blacking out for minutes or hours at a time. His accelerating lifestyle crests in a disturbing scene in which Eddie, high on NZT and nearly out of his mind, ends up in a hotel room with a trampy starlet picked up in a club, and she’s found dead the next morning. Did Eddie kill her? He doesn’t know.
He collapses before an important meeting and realizes he has to cut back to save his own sanity. But he rapidly discovers what his dealer friend never told him — those that go off NZT suffer crippling withdrawal, eventually leaving them unable to focus or think clearly at all. He has to keep taking it. And making matters worse, the mobster has discovered NZT and is putting pressure on Eddie to obtain a supply for himself. Somehow Morra must balance the demands of Van Loon, the mob, a mysterious stalker, and his concerned girlfriend to find a way out while hoarding his dwindling supply.
“Limitless” is exceptionally fun to watch. Eddie’s transformation is exhilarating, with a man becoming who he ought to be in a matter of days. The effects of NZT are cinematically represented with intuitive puzzles solved at a glance, glitzy montages of success and savoir-faire, and a signature “infinite” shot tunneling through the streets of New York, a city seen at speed.
The film isn’t just a fun ride, however. As Eddie rides the wave of genius-level intellect, money, and fame, he quickly adapts to a jet-setting, hard-partying crowd. Sex and alcohol are frequent occurrences in Morra’s new life, and he makes the most of his opportunities, even after he’s back with Lindy. Eddie’s conflict with the mob introduces extreme violence, with men shot, stabbed, crushed, impaled, and tortured. In one particularly memorable scene, a man deliberately drinks a pool of another’s blood. If there was ever any doubt, this is not a film for all ages, and many adults even may prefer to look elsewhere for entertainment.
The rather mixed lesson on drugs poses difficulties. Eddie’s terrible withdrawal symptoms exist as a warning on the danger of experimenting with drugs. But the dramatic demands of the plot undermine the lesson. The film makes NZT look exceedingly fun to use, and as long as Eddie continues taking a stable dose, he’s a genius. The only side effects are when one tries to stop. And who wants to stop being perfect?
*Spoilers ahead, next paragraph*
And that’s where the crucial problem of the film lies. The ending belies the main message. Eddie soon comes to regret taking NZT. But the solution, just like his initial problems, isn’t in self-control and strength of character. It’s in…continuing to take the drug. All his problems, even those of NZT’s side effects, are solved magically by NZT-granted powers. The action makes the terrible shadow of the murder hanging over Eddie seem an afterthought; we never know whether Eddie is responsible for the crime, or indeed whether he committed it. And so a brilliant, NZT-aided Eddie continues until he can develop a “cleaner” version that enables him to get off the drug. If NZT becomes harmless, then why stop taking it? These serious plot holes leave one hanging and significantly hurt the overall integrity of the film.
“Limitless” showed a lot of promise, taking a thought-provoking premise and exploring it in an interesting manner. The introduction of the mob subplot brings gratuitous violence and suspense to an already over-the-top flick, though. While still entertaining, the film’s numerous plot holes and loose threads are highly unsatisfactory. Despite one of the best premises I’ve seen in a while, the movie’s confused second-act development and poor finale leave it far, far short of its potential.