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Sunday, May 1, 2011

Limitless (2011)

Avery and Zack traveled for over an hour to find a theater showing Limitless. Here are their thoughts:
SPOILER ALERT



Avery's Review
Review
Limitless is like taking A Beautiful Mind and combining it with Wall Street. Bradley Cooper stars as the film’s protagonist, Edward Morra. Edward, or Eddie, is a struggling author living off basically nothing. He’s written not even so much as a punctuation mark for his book and his girlfriend leaves him almost as soon as the opening credits are finished. His life is essentially one big rat hole.
This film is directed by Neil Burger, who also directed such films as The Illusionist and The Lucky Ones. Burger manages this time to deliver a movie about stocks, but with drugs.
The movie opens in medias res with Morra about to jump off his balcony into the traffic below while some people are trying to break into his apartment. We then flash through a cool, yet a bit sickening, title sequence to quickly learn just how bad Eddie’s life is. His girlfriend, Lindy, played by Abbie Cornish, dumps him and he continues to struggle with his book. By chance, he bumps into the brother of his ex-wife on the street. After telling this brother, Vernon Gant, portrayed by Johnny Whitworth, about his problems in writing his book, Eddie is offered some assistance. Vernon gives Eddie a pill, ZNT, which supposedly will unlock all the capabilities of his mind. Eddie is doubtful, as a well as a bit suspicious since Vernon was previously a dealer.
Eddie ends up taking the pill, and he is overwhelmed by its effects. Seeking more of the pill, he visits Vernon, only for someone to murder Vernon while Eddie is out. Taking Vernon’s supply of pills and cash, Eddie hits the streets to make it big in the world, making enemies of a Russian thug, Gennady (Andrew Howard), and a man in a tan coat (Tomas Arana). Ultimately, Morra begins to experience the dangerous side effects of the pills.
That is the basic synopsis. Sure, I left out various characters, but that would take me a college-level essay to explain. The acting in this movie is great. Cooper, DeNiro, and Howard all deliver powerful roles in the movie. The plot dragged at times, but at the same time I feel that there are things that were left out in order to shorten the film. The music, while many of the songs sound the same, is enjoyable. Paul Leonard-Morgan delivers an intense techno theme to the movie.
About what I said about the plot dragging, I came into the movie not expecting an action flick, but I was also not expecting a movie so much about stocks and big business. I found my patience being tried constantly, and even the action scenes weren’t amazing, except the last one. Again, though, the film is not an action flick, and should not be critiqued by the standards of one. As its own movie, Limitless has a great cast, an enjoyable plot, a bit of real-world insight, and good story pacing.
I felt that Morra was constantly getting more pills from ridiculous places or even just making them appear out of thin air. He did not have as many as he supposedly used to begin with, at least not that I could see. Too many of the characters, only four or so, were on the drug at one point in time. I felt that that made it a bit unbelievable, but nonetheless it did characterize today’s society. As a sixteen-year old, I was confused by a lot of the political talk, mainly at the end of the movie. The ending was seemingly rushed in an attempt to make you not realize that questions were not truly answered.
In the end, this movie should be enjoyable for most people over the age of thirteen. Kids would certainly be confused throughout its run. Those with little patience might fall asleep or even leave all together. But those people were probably expecting something along the lines of Inception. As a techno-psychological thriller, Limitless delivers. I give Limitless a 4/5. My expectations for the movie were insanely high, and the movie could not possibly have lived up to them. I came out of the theater disappointed, yet I wanted to love the movie so much that it still manages as one of my favorites. I think I’m somewhat blinded by my own desire. But for its genre and intention, Limitless truly deserves a 4/5. The only problem is that it’s really bound, ironically, by the limits of its own genre.
Rating: 4 out of 5

Zack says he gives the movie a 4.5 our of 5. So............


Final Score:

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