*I have vowed to get through this-or any- review without using single Charlie Sheen analogy. It’s like learning to breathe again.*
Mr.Cooper has finally landed his leading role. After many years waiting in the wings of generic comedies, LIMITLESS has allowed him to prove he is much more than just the supporting straight-man. The film adapts the Irish techno-thriller novel THE DARK FIELDS, a moralistic exploration of human potential. Cooper plays a crestfallen Sci-Fi writer who has lost his life and girlfriend, Lindy (Abby Cornish) to a serious lack of moxy. Cooper gives two fingers to his pretty boy image as writer Eddie Spinola adopting matted hair, torn army jacket and dirty plasters on his hands.
As you may have guessed from the baffling viral marketing on the Undergound, drugs indeed play a part in this movie. Eddie bumps into an old friend, a high-end drug dealer spectacularly over-played by Johnny Whitworth. He takes pity on our scraggily protagonist, offering him a revelatory new drug called NZT-48, courtesy of ‘the boys in the kitchen’. The whole movie’s premise sits on top of this clear little pill, “We only use 20% of our brain, but this little guy lets you use all of it.” Except the 20% hypothesis is complete rubbish based on prehistoric nuerlogy. We all love the idea that if we could just grasp that extra smidge of grey matter, we’d become super-human savants, sadly, it’s just not true. As Dylan Moran once said, “if you realised your full potential, you’d find all it amounts to is maybe, eating less cheesy snacks.”
But this is Hollywood, where old wive’s tales can be cranked up to 11 and set to a soundtrack of Kanye West. Eddie pops the pill and transforms into an HD stud. He finishes his book, wins over Lindy and does it all with a painfully sexy audacity. The NZT offers Eddie a phonebook-memory with every insignificant snippet of information making itself useful. Of course, like any drug, NZT has it’s pitfalls, severe side effects mean that if Eddie loses his stash, he won’t just be off to the jobcentre, he’ll be in a morgue. The film adopts the edge of a polished TRAINSPOTTING when things begin to spiral downward for Eddie, complete with a crack-limp and a cliche Russian gangster on his case.
Deciding to cash-in on his abilities, Eddie becomes a Wall Street roller for Carl Van Loon (Robert De Niro). While De Niro is effortless as Eddie’s unhappy apple-polisher, you can sense his heart isn’t in it. Although watching Van Loon cutting the cocksure Eddie down to size (complete with classic De Niro mug and finger wagging) is amazing. The film moves like it’s rushing for a bus, throwing in enough montages to make even J.G. Avildsen nervous.
As Cooper himself has been placed firmly on an LA pedestal since 2009, you wonder could Burger be using NZT with a metaphorical slant for Hollywood fakery, ‘the meteoric rise from nothingness’. Or, he could just be having a ruddy good time directing an entertaining movie with a half decent story.
Limitless lives and dies on Coopers performance and it’s one that he nails with gusto. Burger chose his lead wisely, though it was originally intented for Shia LeBouf which would have been a grade-A mis-cast. Eddie’s sharp-edged charm never seems to alienate the audience as streams of drug-fuelled knowledge pour from his mouth with impecable delivery. Much like Cooper, though he has everything you want and more-you just can’t hate him.
Just because a movie evolves from a novel, ‘clever’ won’t come naturally. Limitless is predictable, derivative and jumps the shark all too often. But also it’s funny, entertaining and like that pretty bastard Cooper, weirdly likeable. Who needs high art when you’re having fun?
See the trailer and our interview with Bradley Cooper here:
