Limitless (2011)

Cast includes:
CHARACTER	ACTOR/ACTRESS	RATING
Eddie Morra	Bradley Cooper
Carl Van Loon	Robert De Niro	½
Lindy	Abbie Cornish
Melissa Gant	Anna Friel
Vernon Gant	Johnny Whitworth	½
Don Pierce	Robert John Burke

Review

Bradley Cooper plays a struggling, apathetic writer who suddenly gets his life on track and his creativity buzzing after being introduced to a new underground drug by his shady former brother-in-law. And not only that, he also becomes brilliant with numbers and irresistibly charming. Although this may seem like a fairly ridiculous premise, it has an obvious infantile charm which, when it's handled as cleverly and playfully as in Limitless, is hard to resist. The film follows some unnecessary and genre-typical paths (with keywords such as mobsters and Wall Street), but even though it's somewhat disappointing that a man who can basically do anything decides to put his mind to deciphering the stock market, instead of going for more creative or intrinsically valuable areas, the way the film portrays our protagonist's feeling of limitless possibilities and the experiences he has while on the drug – both positive and negative – is far from disappointing. Director Neil Burger certainly captures the spirit of the story, and Bradley Cooper's determined, multi-faceted performance makes us root for him far more than his endeavours and character probably warrants. Limitless is neither watertight nor groundbreaking, but it gets a lot of fun and astute observations out of an enticing concept.