Thursday, April 21, 2011

Call Them As I See Them: Limitless (2011)



So I’m just going to come out and say it, Limitless flat out sucked. I mean, it was really bad, and as far as storytelling it failed in almost every aspect.

The movie centers around a downbeat writer, played by Bradley Cooper, who after a chance meeting gets a secret drug that enhances his brain activity, essentially making him super smart. We then follow him as he quickly rises through the ranks of the financial world and dealing with others that want the drug.

Now where to begin…

For a positive, the acting for the most part is good, if not over-dramatic at times, the only real negative in this department goes to Robert De Niro, who plays a powerful business man that employs Cooper to assist him with a business merger. As typical for De Niro over the past decade, it’s a mailed in performance, that he cant put an emotion into the few scenes where he is called on to do it. Then again, that’s what he has done almost exclusively of late, relying on his star power to carry him, and it’s a real shame for one of the all-time great actors to simply not care anymore. As I said, everyone else is passable, I have more issue with the characters than the actual performances.

So let’s talk about the pathetic excuse for characters that Limitless has, Cooper’s writer is pretty typical actually, in all honestly I find he would do what most of us would if put in the same situation, use the new found abilities for personal gain. Abbie Cornish plays his girlfriend, whom at first we can empathize with, since she is clearly intimidate by Cooper showing off all of his new found knowledge. She then leaves him, only to come back right before the end credits. So instead of having him take a stance against him using a drug to make him into a new person, she simply gives in accepts all of the benefits she can reap from it. You see, now you just turned the character into a gold-digger as opposed to giving her some kind of personality or moral ground, so in the end, who cares?

This leads into a whole new issue with this movie, its actually a pro-drug movie. Cooper’s character suffers no real consequences for the fact that he is taking a supposedly illegal drug, aside from the occasional bout of withdrawal or guy following him, but these are more inconveniences than anything. When the movie is over, he is heading for the top of the world, ‘winning’ the girl and able to face anything. All one can take from this movie is that you need to find some drugs cause they are going to make your life better…seriously, did these people even read the script?

The ‘villains’ are a joke. There is this menacing looking guy that follows Cooper around trying to get his stash of drugs, but it amounts to little else than a couple of dull chase sequences, and there is a gangster that Cooper borrows money from who also wants the drug after accidentally ingesting some. For a drug that is supposed to make you smarter, this guy is pretty dumb and easily dispatched when the movie realizes it needs to wrap up soon. So Limitless comprises of Cooper’s life becoming awesome while people inconvenience him a few times, you can almost feel the tension oozing off the screen.

This movie sucks, its boring and poorly done, with absolutely no payoff for the time wasted to sit through it. It had its opportunities, but squandered them for no good reason. The only good thing I can say about Limitless is that was somewhat watchable…once. After you suffer through the let down that this movie is, you never have to do it again as it quickly fades from memory.

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