Limitless

When I go to the movies, I'm looking for a different experience, something I've never seen before. The movie has to make sense, that's one parameter I insist on. And I have to be immersed in the experience.

Limitless took me there. It's a different movie about a totally different experience. There are many surprises along the way, but it's all set up by the one premise: What would you do, what would happen to you, if you could make more use of your brain rather than the 10-20% we currently use?

Eddie is a down-and-out writer living in the city, slowly losing his grip on everything close to him. His girlfriend just quit on him, but wouldn't you after getting one look at him? Wearing ragged clothes in a dump of an apartment in a lousy part of town, half-grown beard but not intentionally, shaggy hair. Unable to focus. Unable to write. A writer who can't write - how pathetic.

Until by chance he meets the brother of his ex-wife on the street. The brother used to deal drugs, but says he doesn't any more. But he seems to have a bunch of these new handy-dandy pills, pills that bring clarity rather than the usual druggedness. Eddie has nothing to lose, so he takes one. And then his life changes.

There are several scenes where I feel I'm seeing -- flying, really -- into the cab 100 feet in front of me, and then plummeting past that through several more cars, a feeling one supposes Eddie is feeling under the influence. It's dizzying, not pleasant. But then the camera does something really perceptive: it shows me choices when Eddie is in trouble (and, boy, he's in trouble a lot). Would I pick that one, that escape hatch, that weapon? Would I notice things about the person that could be to my advantage? All this and more the camera shows me, shows me a glimpse of what life could possibly be like if I could use everything I've ever read and ever seen, put it in order, use it.

Bradley Cooper has really found a character that uses his gifts for acting. This guy is going up and up and up. And Limitless has an extraordinary guest star, Robert DeNiro, in a character who tries to put things into a business perspective for us.

"Limitless" means several things. Limitless is the brain if it's opened. Limitless are the possibilities. Limitless is the situation Eddie would like his pill stash to be. And limitless seems to be the amount of corruption the human species is capable of.

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