Limitless

An incredibly inventive and technically-strong camera (those seamless vertigo "falls" through the city are the biggest treat I've seen since Enter The Void), the excellent Bradley Cooper, who shows the breadth of his acting portfolio, and a very interesting premise about a drug that unlocks the hidden potential of your brain. Thriller of the year? I'm afraid not. The script is only interesting until the opening scene is connected with retrospective storytelling, and from that moment on it is stretched, dull and completely devoid of the "dark side of power". If some pharmaceutical company's logo with the slogan "If you don’t take it you are missing out" lit up behind the dull resolution, I wouldn't be surprised. Unfortunately, the endgame messes up the whole thing and explains why Limitless can never step out of the circle and be truly riveting. The film is horribly modified, and instead of slashing into the living, it runs away through the screenwriting to trouble-free ends. I enjoyed it, but in this form, it's one of many... Despite the fact that Burger is undoubtedly a very handy craftsman. [65%] (03/22/2011)

A watchable film with entertaining formal tricks, but the script has a lot of problems. I was very annoyed by the main character behaving like an asshole all the time (and even more with the smart pill). Of course that made up drug can work in any way the creators see fit, so it’s pointless to look for any logic in its effect, but it still prevented me from fully enjoying the film. And either I didn’t understand its meaning, or the ending is utterly stupid. (05/21/2011)

Say yes to drugs? Limitless is a decently made, but ordinary, sometimes very stupidly naive fairy tale with a blatantly messed up ending (I really don't think one needs any special finesse to hit another person in the head with a TV, or to put a dish brush in his mouth). But the film thankfully has a likable Bradley Cooper, and Robert De Niro, although he doesn't have much to do this time and is in the film mainly to be in it. They say the book is better. I'd like to believe it, but I don't want to read it. God knows who wrote it and under what influence. (08/20/2011)

Limitless grows more stupid as the screenwriter runs out of pills. The idea on which the film is based is used skilfully at first and Burger succeeds in filling the holes in the logic (and in the chosen form of the narrative) with a boatload of optical effects. As the minutes pile up, the very simple initial situation begins to show signs of wearing thin until the people behind the camera seriously have no idea what else they can squeeze out of it (in the climax, they basically take a blind shot in the dark), at which point the film ends. The underused potential of the central premise is revealed by the cautious stab at politics just before the closing credits roll. If the plot had unfolded in this direction from the beginning, without the cheap subplot involving an Eastern European taxidermist desperately passed off as the main plot, Neil could have given us a nicely biting satire for our hour and forty minutes instead of another toothless thriller. 60% (03/26/2013)

I'm debating the whole way out of the cinema whether to give it the full 5 stars or just 4 stars. Since the film had a few weaker moments at the beginning, I'm giving it 4 stars. At times I felt like a blotter that can't take in any more liquid because it's too full. At times it was really crazy and rushed and I couldn't keep up. The "licking" camera was getting to me and it’s a wonder it didn't make me dizzy. The scene where Cooper drinks blood from the ground was really good! Everyone in our row put their hands in front of their eyes. The NZT idea was fully exploited and I'm actually an enthusiastic viewer. (04/24/2011)