Limitless 2011 Neil Burger

See if you can wrap your head around this premise:  Guy down on his luck starts taking drugs, feels unstoppable and invincible, has a good few months and then starts the downward spiral that always happens in movies about guys (or girls) who take drugs.  Now, instead of a run of the mill drug like cocaine or heroin, imagine for a minute a more science fiction-y drug that allows you to use all of your brain.....and there you have Limitless.

It wasn't marketed as a drug movie - but it definitely is.  That's not a bad thing, though.  Drug movies can be entertaining if done well.  No one's gonna say Requiem for a Dream isn't a great movie.  Now Limitless isn't in the same league as that film, but it's not trying to be.  It really is just a slightly science fiction-y take on your standard American drug drama.

Bradley Cooper is the loser who starts winning thanks to his little pills.  Robert De Niro is the financial tycoon who takes an interest in his theories regarding the stock market.  There's also a Russian loan shark, a disapproving girlfriend, and lots of random good looking people who populate the parts of the movie when Bradley Cooper is successful.

So far, it's pretty average.  Entertaining, but average.  And just when you think it's going to be another moralistic tale, it takes a turn towards an extremely satisfying conclusion the likes of which aren't seen in American drug movies.   It's then that I realized why the trailers for this movie completely downplayed the whole drug angle in favor of the science fiction aspects.  If people knew what this movie advocated, they would be morally outraged.  That outrage would be ridiculous and completely without merit, but this is America, so being uninformed and furious is expected.  Watch it and see for yourself.  Tell me I'm wrong.