Movie Review: Limitless

This Tuesday, I took a break from my hectic study schedule to catch a screening of Limitless with my friend Adam.  I hadn’t been too keen on seeing it after watching the trailer, but positive reviews and good word of mouth led me to reconsider.  While I’m glad I went, I’m still having a bit of a hard time deciding whether or not I really liked it.

In the film, Bradley Cooper plays Eddie Morra, a putz with poor hygiene and a bad case of writer’s block.  Everything changes, however, when he gets his hands on a mysterious drug called NZT.  Endowed with Rain Man’s memory and Albert Einstein’s intelligence, Eddie is able to clean up his act, finish his book, win back his ex-girlfriend, and conquer Wall Street.  (All in a day’s work, right?)  But when he suddenly finds himself a suspect in a murder investigation, the target of a ruthless gangster, and a major player in one of the largest mergers in corporate history, Eddie is forced to fight for his freedom and his life.  Complicating matters even further, he begins to experience strange side effects of the drug.  Though it builds to an exciting climax, Limitless ends a little abruptly, and not in a way that I found all that satisfying.

As a thriller, Limitless is largely successful.  The film delivers plenty of suspense, and features solid performances by Bradley Cooper, Abbie Cornish, and Robert De Niro.  I also appreciated the fact that, even with a somewhat far-fetched premise, it manages to stay pretty well-grounded.  If I’m being honest, aside from the ending, my only real problem with the movie is with Eddie himself.  Though Cooper does his best to make the character likeable, Eddie is just not a particularly well-meaning guy.  So, while I enjoyed going along with him for the ride, a part of me kept asking myself what he had done to deserve it.