There is nothing worse than a predictable movie. The plot details revealed by the trailer for Limitless aren’t necessarily familiar, but the major components of the unlimited-power-in-a-limited-resource concept is one we are all well acquainted with. In a flick about a pill that gives the taker the ability to do it all — and do it awesomely — it’s a pretty safe assumption that somewhere near the end of the second act our hero will run out, his life will go down the shitter and he’ll have to learn to love himself without the magic bullet. Throw in a girlfriend who gets all hurt and offended when she finds out about it, an evil nemesis who gets his hands on it, and/or a dead or dying loved one for good measure, and you’ve got elements of a solid majority of Hollywood blockbusters.
If this doesn’t move you to at least a moderate level of rage, we probably can’t be friends.
So it was that I started Limitless with a healthy dollop of cynicism before the opening credits even flickered to life. While this is an unfair mindset for a critic to walk into any film with, it somehow made it all the sweeter to have all of my uninformed judgment efficiently dismantled by a script that side-steps (pretty much) all of the anticipated cliches.
This article appears in Mar 17-23, 2011.