Limitless (2011)

I didn't really know anything about this picture going in. Nor had I heard of its literary basis, Alan Glynn's The Dark Fields. I just thought it looked different enough from my recent viewings, possibly along the lines of Upgrade. OK, it's set in the present, but still a sci-fi thriller about enhancing oneself.

In New York, broke aspiring writer Eddie (Bradley Cooper) runs into his ex-brother-in-law, dealer Vernon (Johnny Whitworth), who gifts him a tablet of an unregulated drug so new it has no name other than NZT-48. It vastly improves Eddie's mental faculties for a day. He comes for more and discovers that someone has murdered Vernon and ransacked the apartment, evidently in search of the NZT stash. Eddie finds it nonetheless, along with significant cash, and uses them to do phenomenally in the stock market, garnering the attention of finance bigwig Carl (Robert De Niro) and reconnecting with ex-wife Lindy (Abbie Cornish). Of course, he also gains the attention of people who would kill for NZT. What's more, withdrawal means progressively serious symptoms....

Vernon mentions the idea that we normally use 20% of our brains. Well, at least he's closer to the truth than Lucy, and we don't know if he's supposed to be right. More importantly, NZT doesn't grant psionic powers, only extreme mental organization for memory and pattern recognition. I could just about believe it.

Mind you, even Eddie on NZT isn't consistently brilliant. In the unlikely event that I had scored some, one of the first things I'd do would be to attempt reverse-engineering so I'd never run out. That initial stash wouldn't last a year, especially if tolerance required higher or more frequent doses.

The film gets fairly artistic in depicting the effects of NZT. When it first kicks in, colors get more vibrant, and the taker seems to have an out-of-body experience. When it wears off, speedy blurs indicate dissociative fugues. Apparently, the drug either suppresses your appetite or inspires such ambition that you may forget to eat, and eating helps alleviate the "valleys." There's no Flowers for Algernon syndrome.

As a thriller, it's pretty effective. Eddie can fight well when remembering lessons, but the villains are relentlessly determined, and one of them gets even smarter than him sometimes. That said, some action sequences leave a little something to be desired.

For this genre, the ending is remarkably happy. It almost feels like a cop-out: Weren't we supposed to believe Eddie was better off without NZT? He certainly could use a bit more punishment. Not only does he get greedy and arrogant; he indulges in extramarital sex without remorse (narrowly missing an R rating) and possibly murders one partner for no known reason. The fact that we never get an answer on the matter and Eddie stops fretting over it suggests that the makers didn't map everything out.

I can see why Limitless got adapted to an esteemed yet short-lived TV series. There are definitely further possibilities along the theme. It's just difficult to keep up the writing momentum for a genius. What we have in these 105 minutes is, rather fittingly, up and down. But go ahead and check it out. You'll feel stimulated without the costs of addiction.