Limitless: Good Film With An Original Premise

Limitless

The movie Limitless presents the hypothetical scenario of a person being able to access all of their brain. A person can only access 20% of their brain.  In this film, Eddie Morra (Bradley Cooper) is a writer who is tormented by writer’s block. When he meets his ex-brother-in-law on the street, he is given a powerful new drug called NZT.

When he takes NZT, he becomes invincible. First, he is able to finish his book in four days. He is able to fight based on what he’s seen in movies. He realizes that math is useful.  He makes a lot of money very quickly by seeing patterns in the stock market.  This newfound success comes to the attention of Carl (Robert DeNiro) and others.

Ad for NZT

Other people find out about NZT and want to use it themselves. This causes Lindy (Abbie Cornish) Eddie’s on-again-off-again girlfriend to be stuck in the middle of Eddie’s problems. In addition, Eddie and everyone else who is taking the drug are getting sick; some of them are even dying.

The opening scene is of Eddie trying to escape from some bad guys who want to kill him. The film takes us back to the events that led up to this scene. We see this scene again, only this time we learn what happens afterwards.

Robert DeNiro and Bradley Cooper in Limitless

Eddie survives this ordeal, and 12 months later becomes a senator of New York.  Carl pays him a visit and tells him that if he runs out of NZT, he’ll die.  Eddie tells him that he’s not taking it anymore, he found a way to get rid of the bad side effects.  It seems that Eddie is still taking NZT because he can predict the future and he knows everything.  For example, he knows many different languages, which he speaks fluently.

I liked Limitless; it had an interesting and somewhat original premise that I thought was pulled off well.  The acting was good, especially Bradley Cooper as Eddie Morra.  Bradley Cooper is known for being in comedies, but he proved that he is a versatile actor.  Robert DeNiro is great in everything he’s in.  Abbie Cornish seems to be a promising young actress and I predict that she will have a big future in movies. Anna Friel played Eddie’s ex-wife—she was unrecognizable because she was messed up by taking NZT for too long.  I loved her in the TV series Pushing Daisies, which should not have been cancelled.

Bradley Cooper as Eddie Morra in Limitless

There seemed to be some special effects in Limitless. For example, when Eddie took NZT, there were multiples of him. There were four Eddies cleaning his apartment the first time he took NZT.

If I recall correctly, there wasn’t any foul language.  If there was, it was very little.  There was a lot of violence, especially near the end of the film.  I didn’t think the violence was gratuitous because it conveyed that Eddie was in danger because he had NZT.  I don’t usually like a lot of violence, but I felt that the violence contributed to the action part of the story.  There was a lot of sex in the film; Eddie had sex with many women and was even suspected of killing one of them.

Although Limitless had some plot holes, I thought it was a pretty good movie. I would recommend it to all people who love a good story, to people who like action movies, and to people who like movies that are a little different.  I would give Limitless a grade of B+.  Limitless is rated PG-13 and has some scary scenes in it. As mentioned before, it has violence and sexual situations. Overall, Limitless is a good movie. It is sometimes confusing, but not too confusing.  There are some scenes that are hard to watch.