INVIGORATING and ingenious, Limitless takes what could have been a Twilight Zone-style one-act story and keeps it bouncing through three acts. Neil Burger’s satire of American self-improvement is something you’re glad Darren Arnofsky or David Fincher didn’t attempt: it’s an unangsty, unself-serious sory of mad addiction in the city. Moreover Burger’s view of New York City is absolutely novel. This city is made to be tunneled through: the Google Earth street scenes are linked in long races uptown or downtown. It’s New York as a series of corridors, all clearly one vast organism.
Based on the Irish writer Alan Glynn’s novel, Limitless is about a dejected New York scribbler with the nice-guy name Eddie (Bradley Cooper). He has what seems to be a turn of good luck when he runs into his former brother-in-law, Vernon (Johnny Whitworth), who is seemingly now a prosperous pharmaceutical rep. Vernon has in his possession some experimental pills, and he bestows one on Eddie. It blows open the doors of perception by awakening the dormant parts of the brain. Under the influence, Eddie finishes his book with ease, but when he goes to Vernon’s apartment for seconds, he finds him dead.
Eddie unearths the stash, but his bigger ambitions get him into trouble. It’s not what Eddie plans to do with the money but how he’s forced to get it that attracts the parasites. One is a master-of-the-universe Manhattan financier (Robert De Niro); the other is a bloodthirsty Russian gangster (Andrew Howard).
Limitless identifies what it calls “the classic smart person’s mistake, of thinking no one is as smart as you are.” The film doesn’t outsmart itself, and the action sequences are brisk and delightfully kinetic. Instances include a De Palma-style moment with Abbie Cornish (as the girlfriend who ditched Eddie) figuring out how to counter a killer in Central Park or an actor vomiting straight up like Old Faithful as a result of one of those swiveling shots that leaves the world upside down. The breezy Cooper—the man you cast when Ryan Reynolds seems too heavy—is perfect as the kind of person who tries to slouch his way into success and ends up with a hard-bought education.
PG-13; 105 min.
