Just Like a Pill

Drugs are baaad, kiddos – just don’t tell Bradley Cooper’s character in the trippy Limitless (he won’t listen).

Cooper plays Eddie Morra in this oh-so-stylish executive produced-by-him movie.

Eddie’s a shaggy, kinda dirty-looking underachiever who somehow has a book contract and a pile of blank pages waiting at home. Otherwise unemployed, he’s managed to hold on to Lindy (Abbie Cornish), his beautiful girlfriend who – oh, wait...she’s done and out of his life shortly after we meet him. The guy’s pretty adrift in New York City, going nowhere fast.

So, of course he’ll have a chance encounter with his old brother-in-law, right, who comes back into his miserable life bearing a gift: NZT, a revolutionary, supposedly FDA-approved new pharmaceutical that promises to unlock it all (the drug, brother-in-law explains, allows the taker to access 100 percent of his/her brain, not just the usual 20 percent).

And that is how good ol’ Eddie’s life changes from one reluctant moment to the other: a pop of NZT rushes him with clarity, with knowledge...with purpose. In the hours after his first fix, he talks his way out of late rent and into his landlord’s wife’s pants, cleans his ew- filthy apartment, and bangs out like, 40 pages of his previously inexistent book (which his editor devours).

He’s hooked.

The next day, he’s gotta have more, so he pays brother-in-law a visit, but stuff happens and he begins to realize NZT is serious business and that people definitely will kill for it. I don’t want to spoil things, so let’s just say he gets his fix and then some, whaddya say?

Armed with a stash of infinite possibility, Eddie goes on a wild self-improvement bender – he gets a fancy haircut, he starts working out and learning languages...just absorbing and tapping into long-lost knowledge, he gets fancy suits custom made, he starts playing the stock market (catching the attention of many a big Wall Street player, including Carl Van Loon, a tycoon with questionable intentions played by one Robert De Niro), and he seduces Lindy back.

Drugs can’t be that bad, he figures as he keeps on climbing...as he keeps on living.

They do come at a high cost, though, which he realizes someone bad is following him, when people start dying...when he, uh, starts skipping freakin’ time. With his life in jeopardy and the drug’s brutal side effects starting to take their toll, not to mention the fact that he’s teetering on grody-junkie territory, Eddie has to smart up but fast if he wants to stay alive.

The Hangover is the movie that made Cooper a household name, but this one’s the one that could very well make him a star. It’s not a perfect offering – mind you, it’s a bit of a high itself, especially when it gets all dangerous – but if it hits, it will open up a limitless world of opportunity for the actor. He’s got the charisma for it, and a go-for-broke attitude that sets him apart, which makes him oh-so-special and watchable and, to borrow a Sheenism, winning.

My Rating ***

Photo: Relativity Media.