REVIEW: LIMITLESS

This is a quick little number, one that is all about Bradley Cooper. I think only he, Clooney or Leo could play Eddie and make us not want to kill him, because damn, he becomes kind of a self involved jerk by the end, quite literally a vampire. What it lacks in cohesion it makes up for in energy and wit. I dunno if it makes Cooper a star/leading man, but damn if it doesn't come close.

I'm glad The Illusionist gets better for you, because I can't stand it. Mess of a story, though the direction was solid.

I actually think The illusionist and Limitless are eerily similar. Both films fall apart once the last 5 minutes end and you think about what you just saw.

Burger without question is talented and a solid filmmaker but he obviously wants to make money with how warm and cookie cutter he gets with his endings. I'd love to hear Burger or Spielberg talk about endings and how Minority Report wraps up nicely.

As for Cooper he is terrific and sells it all really well.

That last 5 minutes is the killer though. This film shows Cooper as a nobody who then starts infiltrating Wall St, Stock markets, banking and then corporate dealings and throughout it all continues to use the drug.

So he then does some really questionable things and by the end is going full tilt into public service.

Either these people (filmmakers) are comedians who lay the joke on us or its on them.

This is one of the strangest endings i've seen. In relation to The Adjustment Bureau it seems totally wrong headed and dare I say it elitist with not a moral bone in its body.

Boy does the film try to make you feel cool but its sad just how clearly the people that made this film missed the point.

This story doesn't have a happy ending and couldn't by showing us there were no consequences it makes the whole exercise seem somewhat masterbatory.

Which is also ironic considering its 2011 and the so called masters of the universe who got us into the economic mess still haven't been regulated, prosecuted and have continued to make bonuses.

Watch the academy award winning documentary Inside Job and read this http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42592018/ns/business-us_business/

Just saw this movie tonight and what a great high concept b-movie.   It gets a little over stylish in places but the script is pretty smart and the last 5 minutes are pretty awesome.   Highly recommended.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Johnny Daywalker 

That last 5 minutes is the killer though. This film shows Cooper as a nobody who then starts infiltrating Wall St, Stock markets, banking and then corporate dealings and throughout it all continues to use the drug.

 

So he then does some really questionable things and by the end is going full tilt into public service.

 

Either these people (filmmakers) are comedians who lay the joke on us or its on them.

 

This is one of the strangest endings i've seen. In relation to The Adjustment Bureau it seems totally wrong headed and dare I say it elitist with not a moral bone in its body.

 

Boy does the film try to make you feel cool but its sad just how clearly the people that made this film missed the point.

 

This story doesn't have a happy ending and couldn't by showing us there were no consequences it makes the whole exercise seem somewhat masterbatory.

 

Which is also ironic considering its 2011 and the so called masters of the universe who got us into the economic mess still haven't been regulated, prosecuted and have continued to make bonuses.

I actually loved the last minutes of this movie.

*spoilers ahoy*

I loved the ending because I didn't see it coming. This sort of movie, where the hero is using some kind of technology or chemical to improve their abilities, usually ends in a predictable fashion. I imagined that the drug would eventually do awful things to Bradley Cooper's character, and he'd have to give it up, ending up as a normal guy again, but having learned a lesson along the way, so that he was at least in a better place than he was at the start.

But it didn't end like that. He used his newly acquired smarts to figure out how to keep him 'zoning' perpetually, and he was heading toward an insanely successful future. But it made sense to me. Smarter, highly driven, highly capable people do achieve amazing things. The fact that the hero ends up having his cake and eating it was a break from convention, and I even found it sort of darkly humorous. Cooper's character did do some questionable things. He did end up a self-involed jerk. President Cooper might not be a good thing at all. I had the feeling that the filmmakers were not endorsing his success. The ending reminded me slightly of  the ending of 'A Clockwork Orange' ; where Alex is 'cured' and back to his normal, terrible self. The hero sees a bright future ahead of him, and the superficial tone is triumphant, but the real tone is actually like the punchline of a black joke.

Ugh, absolutely hated this. For a thriller, I found it boring. As a sci-fi, I found that they played fast and loose with the "rules" of the drug. But the most offensive thing is that a drug that has the potential to give one access to their own brainpower turned a creative artist into a money-grubbing scumbag, and then politician.

If you were a genius money wouldn't be on your list? Also he wasn't really an artist was he? I mean he wanted to be a writer but he wasn't very good at it and didn't seem that dedicated to it. I imagine being a politician is more important. I imagine he will try and make a difference. I never saw how he became a scumbag. I mean unless you think making money and having sex with many hot women makes you a scum bag. Isn't that what rock stars do? And they are artists........

I got about to the point where Cooper is going to go meet DeNiro off the drug and I turned this off.  I dunno, maybe I was in a weird mood or something.  Does the movie become amazingly awesome after that point or am I missing essentially more of the same?

Well, you hit on my issues with the "rules". When the bro-in-law introduces the drug, it was never about making you smarter. It was about tapping into knowledge you already have. In fact, the bro says something to the effect that it helps to be smart already. So it would seem to me, that a writer would have more clarification on more artistic endeavors only. Unless there was already some capability to grasp more complex issues. Cooper's character may have had that potential (we don't know because we have no prior knowledge of him other than he was a lazy lush), but they lost me when the thug started bragging about learning new vocabulary words and creating his own serum. But say you are smart enough to grasp new knowledge, you still have to have the physical ability to accomplish them. So I once again was baffled how a guy who is tweaked out on drugs and doesn't eat or sleep can all of a sudden start speed walking and beating up gang members and trained thugs. It's one thing to outsmart them, but he was literally punching and fighting with them. The drug doesn't give you super speed or strength. But when it comes down to it, I just didn't give shit. He didn't do anything interesting with that knowledge, which was shown in a series of montages anyway, and the infinitely more interesting story with DeNiro's character peaked to late.

No Freeman, I almost turned the movie off several times, too. But my OCD made me finish it.

Yeah, absolutely hated it. I have so many problems with it, I wouldn't even know where to begin listing. Cooper is a charisma vacuum, De Niro is more embarrassing than usual, the "rules" don't make any sense, the VO is garbage (the definition of tell don't show), and the story and structure are awful... Why is a stockbroker someone's idea of "genius"?  How on earth did that little bag of pills last so long, was it Mary Poppins' bag? Why introduce a whole sub-plot concerning Anna Friel and the side-effects if they're going to explain it away in VO (that also has subtextual issues, since the movie seems to be an anti-drug allegory for a little while and suddenly becomes a drugs are awesome allegory about halfway through) ? The same with the dead woman to whom he was tied, they just give some vague explanation as to something that might have happened and never broach the subject again. Not gonna go on but gah, thinking about this movie makes my brain hurt.

Liked the movie from start to finish. Wasn't blown away by any means but I found myself satisfied for the entire film. It's not winning any awards but for an Instant film from Netflix I thought it held it's own. 

So on point, Evi. Lotta dropped balls. In addition to what you stated, the girlfriend notes that the drug changes you as a person and she didn't like who she became. Yet the topic was dropped immediately and Cooper keeps "living the dream" even though he may have murdered a woman. Not to mention, the movie sets up that Cooper would do anything to get his girlfriend back, does, and then spends most of the movie fucking random strangers. If the drug makes you a genius, why didn't the corporate head who apparently was smart enough to create a billion dollar empire not figure out how to manufacture his own supply? Moreover, the guy's "bright" idea was to send his limo driver - a person who walks around in broad day light stabbing people with knives - after a street-level dealer? At one point, I thought the limo driver killed the socialite to frame Cooper and paid off the lawyer to steal the remaining stash of pills. But then we find out that the guy failed at finding the stash and the billionaire guy dies in the hospital. Who stole the pills? If DeNiro knew about NZT, why didn't he call Cooper out immediately? The movie was just a bunch of random scenes strung together with no connection the previous, many of them counter intuitive to what was shown previously. What a mess.

This felt like a Larry Cohen concept that was stolen, eviscerated and turned into a blockbuster. This has "small, ballsy B-movie" written all over it until the last third, where it falls apart completely and the logic holes in the first two acts become impossible to forgive. I have no idea how I'm supposed to feel about Morra getting away with it all, and that's not a good thing.

Why is there such a demand for films to have crystal clear morals in this thread? Do you need every films to be lecturing screed? Can no film challenge how you think things should be in this world? There are a lot of reasonable criticisms in this thread, but that's an issue that seems to pop up several times and doesn't make a lick of sense.

It's not a question of morality - the film just doesn't know what the Hell it's trying to say. You can't spend the whole film treating the drug and its side effects as a Very Bad Thing then cut to "12 months later" with Morra, off-screen mind you, weaning himself off the stuff and all is right with his world and blah blah blah. What kind of storytelling is that?

Exactly, we're told for two acts that the drug makes people greedy, willing to kill people for it, and poses serious health effects and then all of a sudden we're told that the drug is great. It's a complete 180, seemingly for the sole purpose of having a "happy" ending. Really bad story telling.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Andrew Merriweather 

 What kind of storytelling is that?

The bad kind.

But I love the philosophy behind it. "Cheating the devil" stories have been prevalent in culture for thousands of years. Only lately have we become so solely obsessed with people paying for their hubris.

I would have no problem if Morra had got away with it all in clever fashion but "oh I gradually stopped taking it but I'm still wicked smart LOL" is just the laziest kind of cop-out imaginable.

I think the movie would have benefited from another half hour before the end. The end was not set up at all. They either had it planned and run out of time and money or they deliberately cut it in order to get a surprise ending.

This is one of those films that had so much potential, but was kind of neutered.  The voice over was the first mistake.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Andrew Merriweather 

I would have no problem if Morra had got away with it all in clever fashion but "oh I gradually stopped taking it but I'm still wicked smart LOL" is just the laziest kind of cop-out imaginable.

Exactly. It starts off as an almost Faustian tale but all those elements - the side-effects, the murder, the chance that the drugs might finish - are all disposed of offscreen. It's fine if Cooper "cheats the devil" but at least have it cleverly done. As it is, those are just subplots that the film felt like introducing and had no idea how to resolve.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Diva 

Exactly, we're told for two acts that the drug makes people greedy, willing to kill people for it, and poses serious health effects and then all of a sudden we're told that the drug is great. It's a complete 180, seemingly for the sole purpose of having a "happy" ending. Really bad story telling.

And from what I can tell, the ending is a reshoot. There's an alternative ending on the DVD that's a bit darker.

I wouldn't like a darker ending either.

I'd take a scene of him going "Hey this drug makes me super-smart. Instead of going around doing nonsense I'll use my temporary super-smartness to make myself permanently a genius." That's what I'd do.

What's the deal with the "12 Months Later" thing, anyways? Why not just say a year?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ambler 

This is one of those films that had so much potential, but was kind of neutered.  The voice over was the first mistake.

This is the most disappointing part. So much wasted potential.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Diva 

This is the most disappointing part. So much wasted potential.

I knew as soon as I heard the voice over that it was doomed...it's usually a sign that the script doesn't work.

Don't know why folks had a problem with the ending.   I thought it was pretty well set up.   Morra basically improved the drug where one dose caused the beneficial effects for life with none of the side effects.   He even said he did that.   The best way to view the ending was as a super villain movie.   On that level, it works great.

It was set up? How? If you mean it was explained, yeah we got it. We just don't feel that ending was earned.
 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ambler 

I knew as soon as I heard the voice over that it was doomed...it's usually a sign that the script doesn't work.

Same. And it was used so much.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Andrew Merriweather 

I would have no problem if Morra had got away with it all in clever fashion but "oh I gradually stopped taking it but I'm still wicked smart LOL" is just the laziest kind of cop-out imaginable.

This.

Just watched this on Insant View. It was good, reminded me of the old noir DOA, sort of. Not always plausible, but good.

Ending was clunky for me, the alternate ending is better, more abiguous.

There is the possibility that Morra/Cooper is bluffing to DeNiro in the final version, it's clear that he is in the alternate version, which to me is 'better'.