I didn't see a thread on this movie yet, so.
Limitless
Rated: PG-13
My Grade: B-
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I went and saw it this afternoon and thought it was pretty good, though maybe really missing its point. It seemed like a movie with an idea but wasn't really sure what to do with it or where to go with it.
If you don't know the movie stars Bradley Cooper as a man two steps away from being a bum, he doesn't have a job, he's burned through a second serious relationship, and he's dealing with a pissed-off publisher as he's not yet provided them with the first chapters of the book he's supposed to be writing. He runs into his former brother-in-law, a drug drug dealer, who tries to help Bradley out by offering him a drug the BIL is on. It seems he's gotten out of selling the street stuff and has gone legit and is working for a pharmaceutical company that's currently doing human trials on a new kind of drug.
Operating on tired, old, (and wrong) theory that we only use "20% of our brains" the drug allows you to access that other 80% and become smarter and more capable, Bradley is reluctant as he's wanting to keep clean but is given a free-sample and he ends up taking it anyway figuring that since it was an actual, "legal" drug what's the harm?
Within moments of taking the drug Bradley finds himself at first a bit disillusioned but also instnatly "awake" a begins noticing simple things and details he's not realized before and he can remember things he's "learned" in the past but is buried; for example while talking to his landlord's daughter he notices out of the side of his eye a legal book in her backpack, a legal book he saw on the table of an ex-girlfriend several years ago and flipped through he had forgotten all of this consciously, and what he had read, but now he can access it and impress the landlord's daughter into bed.
Bradley enter his own dump of an apartment and finds himself motivated enough to clean the place up and even manage to knock out the first 50 pages of his novel to take in to his publisher at which point the drug has worn off, lasting about a full day, and he's back down to zero. He seeks out the BIL to get another pill but while out doing errands for him as "payment" he returns to find the guy killed, Bradley is able to find a large cache of the pills before the police arrive. Back on the pills, and with enough to last him a very long time, Bradley uses them to try and make money in a down market but not satisfied with the hundreds of dollars he's making day-trading at home he gets a large sum of money from a loan shark to invest with more seriously by working in a firm.
It's at this point the movie more-or-less settles on what it is about as Bradley ends up dealing with a powerful and rich businessman wanting to buyout another company, he's on the run from another man who is after him for unknown reasons, and he's trying to woo-back his most recent ex while also dealing with the drug's heavy side-effects and withdrawal symptoms and consequences. Problem is the movie never really settles on what it's "about" and what to settle on so it begins just throwing things at the wall. He's on the run from a mysterious man, his previous-ex is the drug's version of a methed out tweaker as she was once on it but got off of it, his current ex is mystified on how Bradley turned his life around so quickly, and the loan shark comes back to collect and ends up discovering the drug and wants more for himself as well.
There's a lot going on and you'd think the drug's true makers would be after him but none of that seems to ever come into play as the movie reaches its conclusion.
It does have a nice effect when it comes to drug as while he's off of it the world is very drab, fairly gray, with muted realistic colors, when pops the pills all of the sudden everything is well lit and colorful and Bradley's noticing of things is even slightly reminiscent of the "Holmes-vision" in the recent Sherlock Holmes movie where Sherlock quickly notices and thinks-out things around him to get through the current action he's in.
The movie was fun but also struck me as lost on what it wanted to do, say, and be about. Worth seeing but not one to rush out to see in the theaters. Wait for DVD/Netflix.
Limitless
Rated: PG-13
My Grade: B-
-------------------------------------------------------------
I went and saw it this afternoon and thought it was pretty good, though maybe really missing its point. It seemed like a movie with an idea but wasn't really sure what to do with it or where to go with it.
If you don't know the movie stars Bradley Cooper as a man two steps away from being a bum, he doesn't have a job, he's burned through a second serious relationship, and he's dealing with a pissed-off publisher as he's not yet provided them with the first chapters of the book he's supposed to be writing. He runs into his former brother-in-law, a drug drug dealer, who tries to help Bradley out by offering him a drug the BIL is on. It seems he's gotten out of selling the street stuff and has gone legit and is working for a pharmaceutical company that's currently doing human trials on a new kind of drug.
Operating on tired, old, (and wrong) theory that we only use "20% of our brains" the drug allows you to access that other 80% and become smarter and more capable, Bradley is reluctant as he's wanting to keep clean but is given a free-sample and he ends up taking it anyway figuring that since it was an actual, "legal" drug what's the harm?
Within moments of taking the drug Bradley finds himself at first a bit disillusioned but also instnatly "awake" a begins noticing simple things and details he's not realized before and he can remember things he's "learned" in the past but is buried; for example while talking to his landlord's daughter he notices out of the side of his eye a legal book in her backpack, a legal book he saw on the table of an ex-girlfriend several years ago and flipped through he had forgotten all of this consciously, and what he had read, but now he can access it and impress the landlord's daughter into bed.
Bradley enter his own dump of an apartment and finds himself motivated enough to clean the place up and even manage to knock out the first 50 pages of his novel to take in to his publisher at which point the drug has worn off, lasting about a full day, and he's back down to zero. He seeks out the BIL to get another pill but while out doing errands for him as "payment" he returns to find the guy killed, Bradley is able to find a large cache of the pills before the police arrive. Back on the pills, and with enough to last him a very long time, Bradley uses them to try and make money in a down market but not satisfied with the hundreds of dollars he's making day-trading at home he gets a large sum of money from a loan shark to invest with more seriously by working in a firm.
It's at this point the movie more-or-less settles on what it is about as Bradley ends up dealing with a powerful and rich businessman wanting to buyout another company, he's on the run from another man who is after him for unknown reasons, and he's trying to woo-back his most recent ex while also dealing with the drug's heavy side-effects and withdrawal symptoms and consequences. Problem is the movie never really settles on what it's "about" and what to settle on so it begins just throwing things at the wall. He's on the run from a mysterious man, his previous-ex is the drug's version of a methed out tweaker as she was once on it but got off of it, his current ex is mystified on how Bradley turned his life around so quickly, and the loan shark comes back to collect and ends up discovering the drug and wants more for himself as well.
There's a lot going on and you'd think the drug's true makers would be after him but none of that seems to ever come into play as the movie reaches its conclusion.
It does have a nice effect when it comes to drug as while he's off of it the world is very drab, fairly gray, with muted realistic colors, when pops the pills all of the sudden everything is well lit and colorful and Bradley's noticing of things is even slightly reminiscent of the "Holmes-vision" in the recent Sherlock Holmes movie where Sherlock quickly notices and thinks-out things around him to get through the current action he's in.
The movie was fun but also struck me as lost on what it wanted to do, say, and be about. Worth seeing but not one to rush out to see in the theaters. Wait for DVD/Netflix.
