Limitless Engagement

I missed Limitless when it was in the theater earlier this year, but recently caught up on DVD. This action-thriller starring Bradley Cooper and Robert De Niro follows a struggling novelist coming off a break-up (no connection to the screenwriter, surely) who gets his hands on a miracle drug that turns his life around. The drug gives him the ability to use 100% of his brain (playing into the scientifically disproven myth that humans use only a small percentage of their brains), turning him into an all-knowing, all-remembering, all-awesome superman. (The drug also makes him realize that appearance matters and a haircut can do wonders. But that's incidental.)

I skipped the film in theaters because I simply couldn't decide if it looked like there was enough juice to squeeze from this concept. The movie turned out to be better than you might expect, but not as good as you might hope. There are elements good, bad, and mixed at play.

I'd put the acting in the good column. Bradley Cooper makes a believable and sympathetic schlub at the beginning (even if the hair and costumes oversell the concept), and then a charming hero once he "transforms" -- even though the character could just as easily have come off smarmy. De Niro isn't giving a career-best performance by any stretch of the imagination, but he does have fun with his role without chewing on the scenery too much.

I'd put the visuals in the mixed column. The director and cinematographer definitely have a strong sense of style here. The film is loaded with sharp shadows, swift cuts, whip pans, and more eye-catching techniques. Sometimes this is effective at maintaining pace and tension, and other times it feels like overkill. The signature trick for the film is a "neverending zoom/dolly," a camera that just keeps pushing forward and forward, through objects, through settings, through everything. It's kind of neat, but also done way too fast. It's a good thing this movie wasn't presented in 3D in the theaters, because patrons would have been vomiting in the aisles.

I'd put the script in the bad column. The problem with building a story around a protagonist who is supposed to be supernaturally intelligent is that he has to be supernaturally intelligent. Instead, he makes stupid mistakes (getting himself in trouble with a loan shark, for example), and does lots of things that the still-smarter audience can see coming around the corner. I do rather like the "no learning, no message, just fun" tone of the film's ending, but I spent far too much time overall saying, "this guy literally cannot be this stupid."

All told, I'd rank Limitless a C+. As a Netflix rental, it's not bad. But it wasn't smart enough to be a "smart thriller," and not dumb enough to just be a "big dumb action movie."