LIMITLESS

BY CHRISTOPHER HASKELL
APRIL 20, 2011

A pill that allows for limitless possibilities, what could go wrong, right? “Limitless” is not only as close to an awakening in modern cinema as you can get these days, but a nice conversation piece on significant issues facing our current state of existence.

We are familiar with the overmedicating of our society. If a child cannot sit still, it must mean he needs drugs. Ritalin is the new babysitter. If worrying keeps us up at night, Prozac will straighten that out. We are no longer the pioneers that our ancestors were, but instead, we are pharmaceutical pioneers, engineering our way into one big lump of existence.

“Limitless” highlights that people want to be good at everything yet do not have to work for it. The fast food nation has become the fast-fix nation. Robert De Niro plays the self-made man, Carl Van Loon, a business connoisseur and market mogul. We then have Bradley Cooper plays Eddie Morra, our protagonist, the overnight up-and-comer, medicated and taking life (and drugs) one day at a time. We are, thus, handed a generation gap.

Carl Van Loon eventually enlists the help of Eddie Morra, after Eddie becomes a major stocker player basically overnight. De Niro is the epitome of self-made money, but you must remember that seeking out people as Eddie brought him to his success. De Niro may have worked from the bottom up and faced his share of hardships, but he justifies his success on the risks it took to get there. But when faced with someone like Eddie, who will bring him more money, he is abrupt in buying him off to be on his team.

Cooper’s character is the same deal, but with different methods and different generations. A question delving further passed the script that I would like to know is what generation of people is making the pill? If it is the younger generation, then this is a true testament to them making a means to an end: creating a drug to make themselves more successful. Eddie uses the pills to further and better himself. (Imagine the plummeting homeless rate if this pill was openly available!)

Now, the biggest question that pops into my head is: what kind of world would it be when these drugs exist? Not sure what I am getting at? Look at Major League Baseball and our recent generation’s steroid epidemic (if I may call it that). Mark McGuire and, recently, Barry Bonds, as well as a number of other heavy hitters prosecuted for indulging in steroids to improve their baseball swing.

Baseball stopped this because games are no fun when there is cheating. So you either make the drugs illegal in the game or you allow everyone to have them. That means cracking down (prohibition never seems to work) or watching the over-masculine men swing their big bats while their genitals shrivel to prunes.

More or less, I am getting at whether life is as enjoyable if everyone is good at everything. When there is no such word as special, how will we differentiate between the people who deserve a reward and those who cheat to get it? Pretty soon it becomes less of who earned their spot and more of who took the most pills to get there.

Creating the cure for cancer will be a historic achievement that will echo throughout the ages. But what happens then to the planet’s overpopulation when the world’s most significant population regulator goes away? We all want to believe that creating pills and cures will help prolong our existence and, perhaps, even make it more enjoyable. But when the spices of life get snuffed out and the unavoidable destruction of life catches up with us, will any of those pills be worth a damn?

Placing these ethical questions neatly and slickly in a Neil Burger film is ingenious. The plot follows the dwindling, unsuccessful life of Eddie Morra, a failed writer. That is until he comes across a magical cure for the average male (or female as not to be sexist), a pill that allows you to access 100% of your brain. What follows is pure exhilaration.

Those who have had the pill want more, causing rifts for our lead character, Eddie, to attend to on his way to becoming a multi-millionaire in months. The drug, however, is a double-edged sword. It kills those who get off the medication (minus Eddie’s ex-wife and sister to the original drug dealer) and causes memory loss and unaccounted-for blackouts during excessive use. Nothing gold can stay.

Do not get me wrong; the film stumbles on reproducing many different predecessors; “21” and “Crank” are the first two to come to mind, but honestly, the filmmakers can revitalize these favorites and make them their own. The plot can cover all its bases and does not go for the cheap, expectable draw but leads you on the trail of originality, boggling the mind in the countless self-improvement scenes one second and then leading you on a heart-pounding chase the next.

Bradley Cooper has proven himself indispensable in almost every film genre, and this continues his rise. To be face to face with a legendary actor like Robert De Niro and be able to command the eyes of the audience is a true feat. The two share the screen in many scenes that appear to resemble a torch-passing ceremony.

Women are only in the film as a reference point for the changes happening to the lead (Cooper). Abbie Cornish is almost unrecognizable as the current love interest, as is Anna Friel, who plays the ex-wife, who deals with the withdrawals of the drug. The other supporting males are either addicted to the drug or looking for the drug for personal gain, leaving them very one-dimensional.

Perhaps “Limitless” is a glimpse into our not-so-distant future, but no matter what, the film causes viewers to look more profound than the lines of the script or the film’s content. It forces you to take a good, hard look at the world around you and consider what is best for humanity as a whole. With a splash of a love story and the makings of a fantastic drug thriller, “Limitless” truly takes on a life of its own.