Would you be tempted by it, a magical little pill that sends your cerebrum snapping at 100% capacity? Limitless, based on Irish writer Alan Glynn's The Dark Fields, raises such a question and it's the choice facing Eddie Morra, a fast-talking New York writer down on his luck and with a book advance that’s fading fast. Mind altering substances are nothing new to cinema, with Alice and Neo and friends shoveling down stimulants and narcotics like they’re juicy Big Mac-Guffins, leading to adventures and dangers, and the occasional hangover. Well this time round, the hangover comes courtesy of chiseled charmer du jour Bradley Cooper and a daily dose of NZT-48, a tablet smarter than an iPad, and designed to turn your grey matter Technicolor. Yes, it would seem that in just one peristaltic gulp the very secrets of the universe can be unlocked, with your brain processing information you never knew you knew, remembering every minute detail that’s every stimulated your synapses and turning you into a suave and dapper Rain Man.
The story itself is simple and fun, the writers getting creative with just what a total loser at full speed can achieve. Master languages in minutes, finish that novel before dinner, dominate Wall St. by dusk, and even have time to tidy up, there seems to be no… em… limit to what Morra can do. Cooper is just about charming enough to pull Eddie off, winning the audience over with an affable performance, but not one that will send him into the stratosphere just yet. He succeeds in sidestepping the obvious dangers of a pill the equivalent of mental Viagra, in that his Morra, essentially an insufferable know-it-all, isn’t the biggest prick on the planet.
That said, this is very much Cooper’s vehicle, with the producers assuming we’d want a lot more of Morra, so the rest of the cast suffers from piecemeal roles; Abbie Cornish, as love interest Lindy, is criminally underdeveloped and gets the most ludicrous action scene of the year. Anna Friel, a recovering NZT junkie, looks refreshingly wizened, but hardly makes an impact, and Robert DeNiro is decidedly flat as Van Loon, a banking bigwig Morra wants to impress, but is about less imposing than a Dragons’ Den judge. By choosing to focus so intensely on Morra, Limitless very much pigeonholes just where it can go, with plot strands involving a Russian gangster becoming predictable, and another one about a murder simply forgotten.
There is an upside, though, and the greatest strength on offer in Limitless is its brilliant visuals. Director Neil Burger understands implicitly his film’s colour pallet, originally offering us the dud Eddie set against a patina of greys, browns and ochres. This Manhattan is grungy, feckless and dirty. Then it’s down the hatch and the dials get sharply turned up to lustrous levels of clarity and light. It’s a simple technique, but you cannot fail to notice the searing Azure blue of Cooper’s irises against their previously dull steely shades. Add to this some excellent cinematography from Jo Willems – intense and prolonged fish-eye zooms – that leaves you reeling and dizzy, and perfectly captures the feeling of Morra’s senses ensnared by his intoxicating fix.
Stylistically brilliant and never dull, but lacking in substance.
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