The Limited Scope of “Limitless”
Interested in the proliferation of sci fi/realism films that landed on us in, say, February or March of last year (“Adjustment Bureau,” “Source Code,” “Limitless,” probably others I have forgotten), I streamed “Limitless” (2011, dir. Neil Burger), eager to see the moral conundrum of pharmaceutical narcotics improvement. The premise seems right: a guy named Eddie Morra, played by Bradley Cooper, gets a miracle pill that allows him to use “100 percent of his brain” rather than the same old noodles (the movie claims that we normally use 20 percent), and he suddenly becomes Sherlock Holmes in a suit jacket with no tie. He figures out the formula for making lots of money with stocks, has total recall of everything he has even incidentally read or seen and he likes to exercise more. Complications come up that he has to think his way out of (sometimes with the miracle pill, sometimes without), and he meets Carl Van Loon (Robert De Niro) and they have a few conversations. The movie ends with the guy running for the Senate and getting a new haircut, all the while being smart, ruthless, conniving and handsome.