Limitless (2011)

I just saw this movie for the first time, two or three days ago. I guess I had heard of it, and maybe vaguely knew the general idea, but somehow I missed seeing it.

I liked it! The WAY they shot the movie is borderline spectacular... it has lots of very cool shots that I think might be called fractal... the camera appears to be zooming in and in and in for MILES along a city street, and the central point in the frame keeps expanding until it moves beyond you and you seem to be within it, and then the new central point just keeps expanding. It just suggested what was happening to the main character, from his point of view... he was getting insanely higher levels of perception and awareness of detail, when he took a certain drug... I'll get to that later. Anyway, I also liked the way the colors (do you say the "palette?") changed, whenever he took the drug. When he was his normal, ordinary, average slob of a loser of a self, all the colors in every setting were sort of grayish blue... it made me think of the colors of most scenes in The Ring... it was almost like he was underwater all the time. Then he takes the drug, and almost instantly all the colors he sees become BRIGHT BRIGHT BRIGHT BRIGHT super vivid, fill of warm reds and yellows, like a sunny day in a flower garden.... suddenly everyone's skin looks very healthy and youthful... basically his whole world becomes exponentially more enjoyable and more fun to live in, whenever he takes the drug. I hope this movie didn't prompt too many people to get really into drugs, now that I'm thinking about this... for me, even coffee is usually more than enough. Yikes.

Anyway, as most of us here probably already know, the idea of the movie is that a pretty regular guy who happens to live in New York City, and tells people he is a writer although he never actually writes anything... this dude more or less accidentally bumps into an old acquaintance who gives him a drug, and it makes him... I don't know, maybe ten or twenty times smarter. The point being that he becomes MUCH smarter, so much smarter that... it's just impossible. Suddenly he can learn languages in just a few hours or days, and remembers every line of every book he was forced to read in college, and is super gregarious and sociable, and finds math to be an absolute blast, and can understand significant PATTERNS in the stock market, and can write the great American novel in just a few days... and luckily, he also happens to be Bradley Cooper, so all the ladies find everything he does to be super attractive and interesting.

The downside of all this is that the drug wears off after a while, and he needs to stay jacked or he REALLY crashes, and could even die. So, he needs a constant supply. Also, there is some kind of hit man stalking him. He knows this has something to do with the drug, but he isn't really clear on exactly why for most of the movie. ALSO, he ends up having ANOTHER hit man stalking him (well, a Russian loan shark and the loan shark's henchmen), because he was so overconfident and manic when he was on the drug that he got involved with this loan shark just to get his hands on more money, faster than he could otherwise.

Other plotlines involve his off and on girlfriend, who has serious qualms about this drug, and also his budding career in the corporate/Wall Street world. He also meets his ex wife, who has had some experience with the drug and who was so frightened by it, and so negatively affected by her withdrawal from it, that she seems to have aged thirty years, and just wants to spend the rest of her life hiding from everything, probably curled up in a fetal position as much as possible. She is a disturbing and spooky character to see, but she gives him some important advice that I think helps him to survive.

This is very much a New York City movie, by the way... As a Massachusetts guy, I have always enjoyed the similar movies Good Will Hunting and Charly (a Cliff Robertson adaptation of Flowers for Algernon that they filmed in Boston, in the late 60s). But, Limitless is VERY NYC. I have mixed feelings about this, just like I do about how many movies take place in L.A. The fact that Eddie (the main character) lives in NYC means he very quickly meets global titans of finance and industry, and that he has hundreds or even thousands of bars and nightclubs he can go to to meet random women. I kept thinking, if this movie took place in a normal small town, I'm not sure if his life would actually change very much no matter how much smarter he got. Most of us are sort of fenced in by various obligations, and our lives wouldn't necessarily change very much even in the circumstances shown in the movie. Soooo that's depressing as fuck.

OK, that gets me thinking... one thing that makes this movie work is that Eddie is basically a likeable guy, who just got dumped by his girlfriend. He seems basically decent and honest, and nice, if not necessarily incredibly smart, and watching the movie, you just root for him and you want his life to get better. So... yeah, the factthat he just got dumped by his girlfriend, is on the verge of getting kicked out of his apartment, and is going nowhere career-wise means that he is more open to sudden, huge changes in his life than most of us would be, no matter where we live. Soooo.... yeah, whatever that means.

So, just in general, this is a fun movie, a good thriller, and clearly it got under my skin enough that I'm writing this long review/commentary. If you haven't seen it, you should check it out! Kirk out.