Limitless (2011) Review

Plot Synopsis: A writer (Bradley Cooper) discovers a top-secret drug which bestows him with super human abilities.

Limitless starring Bradley Cooper is a film that I probably shouldn’t have liked.  Cooper, means little to me as an actor.  A-Team was cool, but the Hangover is the most unfunny comedy I have seen in years.  Abbie Cornish was in Sucker Punch, which is the worst film ever made, so I hate her by association.  And then there’s Robert De Niro, who basically is making a living playing himself as of late.  This is nothing different.  Throw in the fact I hate Sci-Fi, and the fact that this has some Sci-Fi like traits, this film should have been crap in my opinion, but it wasn’t.  I loved this film.

Cooper plays Eddie Morra, a down on his luck writer, who’s flat broke, has no girlfriend, and is about to be kicked out of his apartment.  A chance encounter with his ex-brother in law leads to something unbelievable.  His shady ex-brother in law gives him a pill called NZT, which unlocks your brain capacity 100 percent.  He pops the pill and immediately starts seeing everything to the ninth degree.  Of course it’s too good to be true as he finds his brother in law dead, but luckily he finds the stash of NZT and begins taking it on a daily basis.

He gets his woman back, finishes his book, makes new friends, and then realizes that he could make a ton of cash as a power broker.  That’s how he meets up with Bobby De Niro.  He begins working on a merger deal with him.  Yeah, I forgot to mention, he borrowed money for capital from a mobster thug of some sort.  This thug took the pill as well and now he wants more.  One last thing; the pill only lasts one day, so you have to take it every day to stay smart.  When you go off, you get sick and eventually die.  Which is why some other guy is trying to kill Cooper and get his stash.

Ok, so there are a lot of plot holes.  If you’re so smart, why borrow a hundred grand from a mobster?  Shouldn’t you be smart enough to knock off a bank and not get caught?  Or just go to Vegas and count cards for the cash?  And if your that smart, wouldn’t you know better than to borrow from a criminal?  Also, Cooper had bags and bags of these pills.  How many did his brother in law have?  The bag he took from the guy’s apartment didn’t seem that big.

Plot holes aside, this is fantastic.  The acting was spot on, the pacing, and cinematography were outstanding, and everything moved along at a quick pace.  Humor, action, suspense, and drama all blended together for one hell of an entertaining film.  I highly recommend you watch this as soon as you can.