Limitless (2011)

Limitless had the head start that every film wants- it has a great high-concept and a well edited trailer that perfectly explains it. Which is not to say these elements are rare but few films follow up on their potential, but i'm happy to say Limitless does.
I guess we've all heard of this thing about humans only using between 10% and 20% of our brainpower and as you know, this film posits what would happen if you were using a 100% (?). Actually that's only part of what it's about-it does get far more concerned with the wunderdrug that provides this power and the supply and demand of that. Now I realise this the necessary cause/reason for the tension in the film and it does interest me but I was just interested in the idea of what you would do if you could multiply your potential. But those are niggles... Limitless has bigger issues but I'll come back to them.  Bradley Cooper is really great in this- he's showing he can carry a weighty role and Bobby Dee doesn't really turn up for very long but he does some scenery chewing and that's fine but I don't know if i buy the idea of Abbie Cornish's character, the love interest but that's just based on a weird supposition that if you were concerned with using all your potential and you had to micro-managed your time so you weren't wasting any... would you waste it on monogamy? I don't know where that thought comes from. In reality, monogamy would save a lot of time probably. The thing about films like this, like Inception and The Matrix (pardon a very broad comparison), 'techno-thrillers' as i saw it described today is you, the audience are so curious about the concept and the rules of the macguffin, that you want to forget about the story and concentrate on the exposition, in a way. Like the main character has a finite amount of the one-pill-a-day drug and I was far more concerned then he was about using his brain resources to learn pharmaceutical chemistry and produce more but that's me being silly; that's like worrying about James Bond being killed. But like I say, I was thinking he should be sorting that out instead of investigating the withdrawals of the drug and the film should have been focusing on the creative by-product of doing the drug than the drug its self.
But director Neil Burger and writer Leslie Riding know that they have this bountiful IP to play with and Limitless makes it patently obvious they want to pack as much as they can in; at times, it could induce travel-sickness and it's unpredictable to say the least. Obviously there are things I'd change focus on but it's so imaginative and interesting that's it's difficult to be mad at.  I guess that's the point- the film is moving so fast even if you're not sure where you're going, you're giddy and excited from the speed...


I watched Limitless (2011), at the cinema.
My 2011 in Movies will return with You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger (2010)...