I am not Bradley Cooper’s biggest fan. Although I liked The Hangover for the most part, I’ve noticed that Cooper always seems to play a raging asshole. When an actor occasionally plays a kind of character, you can chalk it up to acting. However, when an actor always plays a type of character (ie. Mel Gibson playing crazy or Tom Cruise playing megalomaniac) you can be rest assured that he’s really playing himself. Frankly, I don’t like to support actors as a fan, so I oftentimes stay away from Bradley Cooper. However, extenuating circumstances intervened and I found myself with a ticket to Limitless.

As promised, Bradley Cooper does in fact play an asshole in this movie as well. This one’s name is Eddie Morra, and he is a washed-up writer wannabe who can’t even get himself together enough to clean his apartment much less carry on any serious job. He gets dumped by his girlfriend who is sick of being an unpaid maid, and down on his luck runs into the brother of his ex-wife, who is a drug dealer named Vernon. Vernon offers him a pill that will give him the ability to use 100% of his brainpower (or whatever). The drug is called NZT, and Eddie takes it almost right away.

NZT not only seems to make you more intelligent, but also gives you an almost Adderall-like focus. Eddie cleans up his act and gets to work. He writes a rather decent book and begins to make money in the stock market. However, he isn’t smart enough to keep himself out of trouble with Russian mobsters, although he does get back the girl. He also finds out that the drug is deadly and that if he stops taking it cold turkey he could die. (It’s like you can’t trust drug dealers these days! What is the world coming to?) Which leads up to the first scene in the movie, wherein Eddie considers jumping off a building. It’s like the circle of… something. Except then we break free of the circle and Eddie figures out how to redeem himself. Or not, since he’s just a smarter jerk, not less of one.

I am not going to spoil the ending, except to say that I suspect it was meant to be a “happy” one. But here’s the thing: Eddie isn’t a hero. Not under the influence, he’s a lazy procrastinator who uses people. On drugs he’s almost sociopathic in the way that he charms people into doing things for him, and gaming systems to his advantage. In fact, there is a subplot wherein he may have murdered someone during a blackout, and he is almost single-mindedly focused on weaseling his way out of it, while never expressing concern for the woman he might have murdered. So, while I was interested in what happened to Eddie, it would have been nice to see him actually redeem himself rather than just get a happy ending because he’s a special snowflake.

The other issue I take with a happy ending is this: there is a drug out there that has some of these effects. While it doesn’t make you a genius instantaneously, it does give you focus and drive and helps you study. It’s called Adderall and people cheat the system all the time for this drug. People who do not have ADD fake diagnoses to use it as a study aid on tests and get addicted. It’s not like this premise is all that farfetched, and the parallel was not lost on me. So while it’s great that a character might not have died from the movie-NZT version, helping him prosper? I am not a puritan, nor am I going undercover to find drug rings. But I do think it sends the message that abusing deadly narcotics will turn out just fine. Might I suggest the people who think so watch a little show called Intervention?

Despite my issues and attendant Cooper snark, I did enjoy this movie and do recommend it. It was at times funny and fantastical and kept me on the edge of my seat. It was also great to see Robert DeNiro in a something that doesn’t have him playing some campy role so he can really show off his acting chops. He was probably the best part of this movie: sometimes sinister, sometimes awesome. It was also interesting to see his character’s real intelligence and drive when compared to Eddie’s chemical-induced focus. I get that DeNiro was probably brought in to play a villain role or at least a foil, but I was rooting for him whenever he was at odds with Cooper’s character.

I also recommend this movie because it is the true definition of a thriller. It thrills, it excites, and you never know what is going to happen next, or which way the path will turn. I was completely enraptured in the story from start until the end, and that was in great part to the cinematography and all the other little extras that go into making this a smart film.

Bradley-Cooper-as-yet-another-jerk notwithstanding.

   -- Sara Paige