Limitless

***WARNING***

THE FOLLOWING REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS AND CONTRADICTIONS THEREFORE IT MAYBE UNSUITABLE FOR SOME FUCKS. 跳躍のトラは穏やかにに運命の彼の焼かれた豆を買うために列車に常に乗る .

 ***YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED***

Lets take a moment away from film reviewing and talk about the hot topic of drug addiction. Being addicted to any drug be it Heroin, Cocaine, LSD, Paracetamol, Alcohol, Tobacco or Tabasco is never going to end anywhere good. Once a person is addicted to something it rules their life, if they manage to quit a drug addiction, their life then becomes all about not falling off the band wagon or finding something else to be addicted to. Even relatively minor addictions such as food or pornography have the potential to be life threatening. That is until a magical film called 'Limitless' comes along and explains that if we all took a drug, got addicted to it and learn about the multiple ways it actually benefits us, then we could improve our lives and live happily ever after. 

Thats right folks, 'Limitless' is here to say drugs are good, so lets all shoot up and get high as fuck! Well, at least that's the message I took away from this 'half baked' thriller, but somehow I don't honestly believe that's what director Neil Burger and writer Leslie Dixon were 'shooting' for.

Put simply 'Limitless' is about a depressed writer with writers block who not only is a candidate for overused modern character cliché's but also takes a magic wonder drug that enhances his brain activity to near superhuman limits. While taking this drug he not only cures his writers block but he also completely abandons that original character flaw and established story arch in order to make himself a bunch of money. The trouble being that he becomes addicted to the drug which, if he stops taking it will kill him.

Read into that plot from any viewpoint and it will always show its self to be pants on its head, pencils up its nose, snooker loopy. This would be fine though if the film somehow acknowledged this, but instead 'Limitless' takes itself completely seriously and proceeds to portray its story in a gritty, overly dramatic way.

So direction wise its a dud from the start on the basis that the director can't even establish an appropriate tone or even demonstrate a basic understanding of the story. I can't hold all the blame on Neil Burger for this though seeing as Dixons' script has about as much brains as any given 'American Pie' sequel.

It is clear that 'Limitless' wants to put out a simple "drugs are bad, mkay" message. The main character takes drugs, bad things happen, he has to battle against the drug in order to overcome it and sort his life out. That's all in there, but its been about as well implemented as the story was implemented in the two 'Matrix' sequels. In order for any anti drug story to work, the drug itself needs to be portrayed as something which the main character would have been better off never taking, a point that 'limitless' misses the mark by quite a remarkable distance.

On the plus side to all of this the acting contained within the film is pretty solid. Bradley Cooper proves that he can be a credible leading man. That is when he's not cowering in the shadow of the colossus that is Robert De Niro who effortlessly dominates the proceedings by appearing in only a handful of scenes. Even Abbie Cornish supplies a decent amount of credibility to what is essentially a simple girlfriend role.

Another plus point to the film is that way it was shot. Pleasing shot compositions, changeable colour schemes and some artistic representation all contribute to what I thought was a pretty great film to look at. Especially when compared to my recent viewing of 'Sucker 'Punch' which tried and failed to do what's done here with considerably more budget and experience.

The be all and end all is this, 'Limitless' is the kind of film that has some decent ideas but doesn't have a clue what to do with them. Its like taking a bunch of complimentary colours, throwing them up in the air and ending up with a brown, gunky, mess. I just hope that Charlie Sheen doesn't see this film, it really would support all of his bullshit statements from the past months, and he doesn't need any more encouragement.

Limitless gets...

1.5 out of 5