So I went to see Limitless, which must have been the most popular movie at the time as the cinema was absolutely packed out. So much so they had a bouncer at the door. You know a film is going to be bad-ass if there’s a bouncer at the screen entrance.
Was it bad ass then? Well mostly yes. Limitless has its moments of brilliance that really keep you enthralled in the story, but there are some areas that let it down slightly.
The major let-down for me was that it just didn’t go far enough. The movie, if you didn’t already know, is about a man named Eddie Morra who comes into possession of a new drug that allows you to access all of your brain, rather than the ten to twenty percent we normally use.
Naturally this ability is quite helpful, and using this new drug Eddie manages to write a book in a few days and make a tonne of money on the stock market; essentially getting paid and getting laid.
Eddie makes a few grand in just a few days but decides that it isn’t coming in fast enough. So he needs to generate some capital. How does he do this? He borrows $100,000 from a loan shark. Yep, I couldn’t see any repercussions with this move either. I mean, he’s using a pill that allows him to use all of his brain and he thinks this is a good idea? I’m only using ten percent of mine and I can see quite clearly that loaning money from a loan shark is such a monumentally stupid idea. Why didn’t he just carry on doing what he was doing? In a week he’d have about a hundred grand so why get involved with a loan shark?
For the plot that’s why. Without the loan shark this movie goes nowhere. In the end the shark is the main antagonist who wants more money from Eddie, surprise surprise, and then wants some of the drugs he’s using too. This results in sharky buzz-sawing into the poor guy’s house in order to kill him and nick his drugs.
There were other antagonists after the pills too however. There’s a mysterious man who is obviously following Eddie around the city. At first you think it’s just Eddie being paranoid, but no this guy really is after him and he works for a very powerful man who needs the drugs to go on living.
See this problem we have here is that the guy is following Eddie round for days. Even while he’s been at his shoddy flat with zero security. This begs the question: why the hell didn’t the bloke just break into his shoddy apartment and take the drugs, killing him if necessary. Why does he wait so long? Well it’d be a short movie otherwise I guess, so he is instructed by the writers just to follow him round for a while.
Okay, I’ve mentioned a few bad points there, but this movie isn’t bad at all. Far from it. Probably the best thing about this movie is the stars. Bradley Cooper and yes the man himself Robert De Niro. Both of them are on top form in this movie. Cooper plays Eddie Morra and De Niro plays Carl Van Loon, a highly successful and very important businessman. It is Van Loon who notices Eddies prolificacy in the stock market so he wants him on board to help in some boring energy company merger.
De Niro is probably the best things about this movie. He just has something about him. Even though it’s Bradley Cooper who is the star, and deservedly so as he is very good in it, without De Niro I don’t think this movie would have been as good and it probably wouldn’t have made half as much as it did in the box office. His talent knows no limits.
Abbie Cornish is in this too. She plays Eddies girlfriend, Lindy, who leaves him at the start when he has nothing, gets back with him later on in the movie when he’s doing well for himself only to find he is only doing so because he’s on drugs. Now, at that point she leaves him, taking the moral high-ground and not wanting to be part of his life if it only exists because of drugs. All well and good, sends out a good message and boosts her character.
That being said, at the end of the movie when Eddie predictably ends up in politics, she has gotten back with him! What happened to her morals? Oh he can speak fluent Japanese, well I guess I’ll forgive him then. It just ruins her character for the sake of a more happy ending for Eddie. Screw happy endings! Make him lonely, it would have been so much better.
Overall though for all its bad points Limitless is a good movie, it’s exciting, entertaining and has a great cast. Its story may be a bit mental (excuse the pun) but if you just go with it and don’t ask stupid questions like I’ve done for most of this post, you’ll enjoy it a lot. Like I said, the main issue is that it just doesn’t go as far as it could do. Think about it, he can literally do anything, he is limitless, yet all he does is make lots of money and go into politics. I was pretty hyped for this movie so I suppose I felt a little disappointed.
Final verdict: 3 Stars. Really far-fetched but a good jaunt nonetheless.
No comments:
Post a Comment