Bradley Cooper hits the big screen again in Neil Burger's Limitless, but this time tries to take things much more seriously. Can Limitless still make for a good movie even though similar plots have been used before? And is Bradley Cooper really the right guy to pull off this captivating and complex idea of using 100 % of your brain onto the big screen?
The film chronicles the life of Eddie Morra (Bradley Cooper), who is a struggling author whose suffering every writers nightmare; writer's block. After his girlfriend Lily (Abbie Cornish) is ready to give up on him until he can manage to find a 'real' job, he runs into his ex-wife's (They were married for five minutes) brother Vernon.
He soon realizes his knowledge deserves to be used for something other than writing; the stock market. He's employed by a famous business man named Carl Van Loon (Robert De Niro). Soon he begins to feel NZT's side effects, and after encountering his ex-wife (Who also used NZT), he is warned that she is dying and that soon he will suffer the same fate. But when Gennady arrives to retrieve Eddie's money, he finds an NZT pill and consumes it, and soon feels it's power. Now Eddie must chose whether to save himself by no longer taking NZT, or stopping Gennady by continuing to use it.
Bradley Cooper is the actor who surprised me the most in the movie. He managed to pull off emotional and serious scenes well, as well as action and comedy. I can now see clearly why he's a contender for the upcoming Flash movie, and I'd love to see him casted. He definitely made himself distinct from his fellow actors from The Hangover, and not too many actors can manage a both serious and comedic acting style simultaneously (James Franco is a good example).
The movie touches a subject that is very complex; what if you could do ANYTHING and could use 100% of your brain. While it shows us most of the stuff you could do, it doesn't really go very in dept to the subject. It also has a surprisingly complex plot (Which I loved) that requires you to connect the pieces of the puzzle (Which I honestly didn't manage to get entirely together). While the plot isn't really anything amazing, it is very fun and keeps you excited. I can't help but draw a comparison to Adam Sandler's in which he too abused a device (Or pill in this case) that made life easier and soon felt it's cons.
The movie starts out leaving you completely clueless of what to expect, which I actually liked for a change . It went from the story of a struggling author who's also a loser, to basically Wall Street 3. And that's not a bad thing. The camera views are great, showing how it looks to Eddie when he's on NZT, and also showing some parts where he's speeding through the city. Bradley Cooper's narration of the movie may annoy some, but I happened to love it. It helps show his perspective on things and what's going on very clearly, rather than you guessing or figuring it out for yourself.
Robert De Niro's character seemed a little pushed for me. While his character is pretty important for the plot, he feels a little unnecessary at times and and just gets much more screen time than he needs (He actually might've gotten more screen time than the actual villain). The film doesn't have a very clear antagonist, and a character that you would've never expected to have any importance (Gennady) suddenly becomes the central antagonist, and it just feels a bit far fetched how quickly it all happened.
Probably the weakest link in the entire movie would have to be Abbie Cornish. Her chracter is probably the most fake and annoying, and the weakest scene in the movie (That was meant to be emotional) was completely ruined by Cornish's extremely fake and awkward sobbing.
I was very stuck on what to give this one, a 4 or a 3.5, and I decided on the former because while the movie is very fun and enjoyable, Bradley Cooper basically carries the acting on his own and doesn't really have the strong supporting cast he needed, and the movie just had to many unnecessary characters and plot points. But if I could stretch my scores, I'd give Limitless 3.75 but since I can't...
I give Limitless 3.5 out of 5 stars:
And here's the Limitless trailer:
What did you think of Limitless? Are you going to see it?
