Movie Review: Limitless

While I was in Salem the other day I caught the movie Limitless at the Northern Lights Theatre Pub. Mostly starring Bradley Cooper, but also including Abbie Cornish and Robert De Niro, the movie is about a guy, played by Cooper, that's given a pill to unlock his fullest potential. With the ability to recall anything he's ever seen or said, to solve problems faster than he ever has, to derive conclusions with infallible logic, and with the confidence to back it all up, his potential is limitless.


Of course, there's always a catch. The first catch is that his supply of these pills is finite. The second is that lots of people - violent people - are after them, and the third catch is that long-term usage appears to have very negative side effects. But our protagonist chooses, as he puts it in the trailer, to become the perfect version of himself.

The acting is solid and the timing is perfect in this film. The visual presentation serves to reinforce the story, and really, as a telling measure of how good a film is, I left the theatre talking with friends about how much we enjoyed it. The film opens on a dark note: Cooper's character, presumably at the end of the story, is about to jump off a building so that he might make his one final choice. Then we see all the events leading up to that: making money, making enemies, finding out more about the drug he's taking, etc. It's a simple, though highly enjoyable, narrative.

Final word on Limitless? Well worth watching; aside from one scene that made me cringe and avert my eyes, it was highly enjoyable.