by Roger Bourke White Jr., copyright March 2011
Limitless came out better than I expected. The movie exceeds the plot summaries and trailers. It is a good technofiction story and the special effects and acting are good at helping the story along.
Limitless is the story of how a new designer drug can affect peoples' lives. The drug provides a lot of benefit but it does have some hazards. The story unfolds these pluses and minuses well, and avoids a lot of cliché about Mephistophelean deals and Reefer Madness-style descents into madness and tragedy. (It avoids a lot of them, but not all.)
It also deals with a fairly interesting mix of characters and moves them through the story without getting too stereotypical. And the special effects are well employed to enhance the story, rather than the much too common other way around.
So it came out better than I expected and I enjoyed it. It was internally consistent which made it a nice exploration of what a new technology can mean to people. I like it when I see a movie that does that.
Here are the technofiction points that I saw:
o First, it is based on the enduring urban legend that humans use only ten percent of their brain. In this movie for some reason that figure is upped to twenty percent. (I guess that the reality that we use one hundred percent of our brain is slowly creeping into urban legend consciousness.) I can suspend belief on that, if the story stays consistent with its premise, and this one did. (Inception, which I also enjoyed and reviewed, used this same concept, but did not.)
o The story was not consistent about where this brain power enhancing wonder drug, NZT, comes from. In spite of its power and potential, we first see it in the hands of a loser pusher, who is giving a sample to his loser ex-brother-in-law, Eddie Morra, our protagonist. Ummm... not a likely pair to run across a drug with such potential while the rest of the world is essentially clueless about it. Even more plot deviceish the brother-in-law then gets a mob hit job done on him. How much NZT Eddie recovers, and if he ever got more before the movie end, are never clear.
o The movie does a pretty good job of showing off what a person with a lot of heightened thinking ability would do. For example, his friends change and he gets into complex business deals to make fast money, not simple gambling deals.
o This drug has side effects, which is fine, and one of them is to make the user a bit maniac -- up -- Eddie does a lot and talks a lot as well as thinking a lot. The movie does a good job of exploring overdosing and cutting off on the drug.
o In spite of his super thinking Eddie -- and thus the story -- makes some stupid mistakes. His dealings with the ruthless loan shark are all plot deviceish, not smart. He borrows money from this ruthless loan shark he doesn't know, he doesn't pay the money back on time, the loan shark takes an NZT pill from him during a confrontation and tries it. Umm... when's the last time you popped an unknown pill you just took off a loser who had stiffed you? Bad karma, man!
o Through most of the movie there is a mysterious man trailing Eddie. At one point Eddie is making phone calls to other NZT users from the dead pusher's little black address book and discovering their horrible fates when he calls a number, and it's the mysterious man... who's sitting on the park bench next to him. It's a neat scene! But instead of talking to this guy face-to-face, he runs and the movie goes thriller on us. Too bad, it was a stilly choice for Eddie and the movie.
o The ending is good. Eddie gets smart again and outwits those who are trying to bring him down, including himself. He has learned to use this new tool and it's making his life much better. I liked that. It's a good technofiction ending.
In sum, the movie was better than I expected. The story is good and both the acting and effects are there to help the story along, and they do so well. If you like science fiction that's really about a potential future of ours, not just a space opera or movie formula rehash, you'll like Limitless.
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