Limitless (2011, Neil Burger)

A wannabe writer known more for his drinking than his prose enters into a Faustian pact when he becomes hooked on an experimental smart drug called NZT which increases his intellect.

Limitless is a great thriller with a wry sense of humour. When we first see Eddie Morra (played by Bradley Cooper, of The Hangover fame) he’s dressed like a roadie for Pearl Jam with long straggly hair and is immediately dumped by his go-getting editor girlfriend (Abbie Cornish). What was she doing with this loser anyway? The Inciting Incident (as Robert McKee would have it) is a meeting with his ex-wife’s brother who we infer used to be a small-time drug dealer (and might still be). He gives Eddie a clear pill called NZT which when taken increases his intellect exponentially. A few scenes later Eddie is dressed in a smart suit, with a fashionable short haircut, looking more like the suave Bradley Cooper we’ve seen in the A Team and the Hangover films. Imagine if we could all take a pill just to iron out our sartorial crimes (let alone allowing us to learn Italian in a weekend) I think the drug companies might be onto a winner...

But into each life some rain must fall... The rain in Eddie’s case comes in the form of Gennady, a crazy Russian gangster he’s borrowed some money from with which to invest on the stock market. Silly boy. (Gennady is played by Andrew Howard, an actor surprisingly from Port Talbot in Wales and not St Petersburg.) Robert De Niro has a few scenes as a tycoon called Carl Van Loon (think Donald Trump minus the comb-over) who is impressed enough by Eddie’s new-found intellect that he asks him to broker a major corporate merger. Anna Friel, playing Eddie’s ex-wife and Abbie Cornish, so good as Fanny Brawne in Bright Star, Jane Campion’s film about John Keats, take on the other main roles.

Leslie Dixon’s screenplay sticks (for the most part) closely to the plot of The Dark Fields, the source novel by Alan Glynn. It’s always tense when one of your favourite novels is adapted by Hollywood but this is one rare occasion where the author needn’t disown the film. (Incidentally, I still think the Great Gatsby-inspired title The Dark Fields is better than Limitless but that’s a minor quibble.) Style-wise it owes something to David Fincher’s Fight Club, as well as some visual touches from Ron Howard’s A Beautiful Mind (I’m thinking particularly of the representation of cascading stock market figures via some clever CGI effects).

Neil Burger, previously best known for enjoyable magician romp The Illusionist with Edward Norton, has made an extremely enjoyable and stylish film with solid performances and hyper-kinetic cinematography. One of the most purely enjoyable films of the year so far, Limitless is a thriller that I can unreservedly recommend to anyone.