Review of Limitless (2011) by 4Tomillions — 27 Aug 2011

How could a movie so well acted with such a great concept that has plenty of nifty tricks up its sleeve go so wrong? Plot holes bigger than the hole in Bin Laden's head.

Let's not even discuss how his loser brother-in-law would have gotten his hands on the drug to begin with. We'll start with what I believe to be the most obvious and by far the most annoying prolem in the film. If you rub a lamp and a genie pops out, the first thing you are going to ask for is more wishes. If you found a pill that gave you a "4 digit IQ", you would immediately secure an unlimited supply of said pill. Only in this movie, multiple people have taken the pill, and despite being super geniouses, none of them had thought of this. Our main character didn't even think of until last 15 minutes of the flick. And, why would he need to go to a chemist to have the pill made. Surely he is smarter than the chemist. And, I would think the fewer people that know about a pill like this the better.

Why the hell does he have to borrow money from a Russian Mobster? He wrote what is sure to be the greatest piece of literature of modern times in less than a week. I am sure the publishing company would have been happy to advance him a $100,000 for the rights to his next work. Our super genious also forgets to go pay the mobster back despite having over $2,000,000 in the bank and a perfect memory. This is a slap in the face to audiences' intelligence.

The holes don't stop there. They just keep a'comin'. Multiple people have taken this drug. All of whom were transformed into geniouses in the process. Yet, he was the only one that realized if you eat and don't drink alcohol there are zero side effects. What? Seriously? You have to be @&!> kidding me. It's that simple? That's it? And he is the only one that figured it out.

What was really great were the fight scenes where he was able to take on 10 guys at once. All he had to do was channel Bruce Lee via some memory he had of watching the Chinese Connection and Enter the Dragon. Just amazing! Amazing how this apperantly only applied to him. The pill popping genious Russian didn't even notice he had grabbed and was holding a weapon behind his back. Though we don't know how it all went down with the lawyer, I doubt he put up much of a fight either. Sadly, it gets worse. So, he kills the Russian and he is laying there with no more pills when it hits him. He needs to drink the blood of the Russian to get the drug into his system. Even if this were possible, and I highly doubt it is, he would have to drink just about every ounce of blood in the guys body. But our hero just takes two spoonfull size gulps off the tiled floor. And bam! He is back in the action in less than 30 seconds. Just incredible.

Plenty more ludicrous stuff follows until we finally come to the end, and what is clearly the second most ridiculous event of the movie. De Niro's character comes to meet Cooper's character to let him know that he now controls the supply of the drug. And if he doesn't do what they tell him to do, he will be cut off. Improbably, our super genious hadn't been able to figure out what company made the drug. Even more unlikely than that is the chance of such a meeting ever even occuring. You are telling me that a power hungry, ego maniac has the opportunity to control someone who is taking the drug or just take the drug themself and he chooses the former? Doubt it. De Niro's character would have been popping more pills than Anna Nicole Smith.

If you want some real entertainment from this movie, buy the dvd and throw it into your fire as you roast marshmellows. That's about as good as it's going to get.