“Limitless” on one level is a really enjoyable tale about a guy, Edward Morra (Bradley Cooper), who discovers a drug that enables him to use the portion of his mind that in most people goes unused; though I prefer the other, more subversive, unspoken level best.  That movie is the story of a man that, through the selective use of a pharmaceutical called NZT, is able to make a great life for himself that he would have been unable to do without the drug.

In fact, the story would glorify drugs blatantly, if it were not for the obligatory threat of misuse, as well as the way that Morra almost manages to screw up what is probably the best thing that has ever happened to him.

The film begins at the end, with Morra threatening to jump from a rooftop, and from there it moves to the circumstances that put him on the ledge in the first place.

He doesn’t appear very competent as a person, never mind a writer, because it seems that he’s unable to make a living doing anything else (Morra has been living off an advance from a book he’s currently unable to write).

This makes him a prime candidate for NZT because, other than his life–he doesn’t have all that much to lose at this point.

As I said at the opening, I really liked this film (despite Bradley Cooper, who oftentimes having this “weightless” quality to his acting that makes taking him, and by extension his plight, difficult to take seriously) though I wished that the writers had perhaps taken the drug as well, because Morra sometimes seems to lack the logic that a reasonable person, never mind a brilliant one, would have.

For instance–if you discovered a drug that increased your intelligence to unheard of levels, and your supplier is unable to supply any longer (because he had become life-imparied) then why wouldn’t you use you newfound abilities to get a lab to analyze the unknown chemical that you had been taking for the last few days?  There are two reasons that you would do this.  The first is so that you would–finally–have some idea what is is that you have been ingesting.

The other reason is that you might want to get a reasonable supply of the stuff, since it’s been shown that he cannot cope too well without it.  Though, to the film’s credit, it the first one that I have seen where a little girl’s ice-skates are used as weapons, which is made all the more impressive since the girl is still in them!

The second is because you just might want to reproduced the drug thats been doing so well by you.  Cooper’s character does come to this realization, but way too late to make any sense, especially for someone with ‘limitless’ intelligence.