My Favourite Movies: Limitless

In some ways (actually in many ways) this is an odd film. But in another way it is very modern. This is a film about instant gratification – or at least practically instant. It’s a film about someone who gets almost everything he wants with the minimal effort required to swallow a pill. This is a film about drugs pure and simple. Eddie Morra is a struggling writer – struggling indeed to write the first word. His long suffering girlfriend (played by the gorgeous Abbie Cornish) has decided to leave him and he’s at a low point in his life. Enter the rather seedy brother of his ex-wife who offers him a ‘FDA approved’ drug called NZT. Thinking he has nothing to lose he pops it and finds to his amazement that all of his mental facilities go into overdrive. But how does he use this new found ability? To get his landlords girlfriend into bed! Desperate for another ‘hit’ he contacts his ex-brother in law and that’s when everything starts to spiral out of control. Eddie now has a stash of NZT but both the police and the mob want to know how he’s involved. Using the drug to make money – after finishing his book in a few hours of frantic typing – he begins to get noticed by the rich and powerful. It is only then, as things start to get very good indeed, that the side-effects and stories of what happened to previous users come to light. Eddie now has a choice – stay on the drug to keep gaining money and power or come off it and possibly die from withdrawal symptoms. That’s if the mob doesn’t find and kill him first.

This is an interesting film in many ways. It deals with personal, political and philosophical issues in ways you don’t often see in modern movies. It looks into the mind of an average no future, no hope individual and shows what would probably happen if you could light up their mind like a Christmas tree. Inevitably because, as the rather wasted Robert De Niro character rightly said, he hasn’t earned any of his abilities through hard work and experience he responds as a child would respond in a candy store – reaching out for the most obvious objects. In Eddie’s case it was sex, money and finally political power. These were shallow dreams from an essentially shallow man. He achieved his aims but where they really worthy of achievement by someone who could see peoples moves before they even thought of making them, for someone who could see patterns in data that no one could even conceive of never mind see. Eddie largely got what he wanted but personally I don’t think he got very much. He certainly wasn’t using his newly enhanced brain power for anything productive. He merely used it to use the system to his advantage which I thought was a huge waste of talent. At least that’s what I took away from the film. Other people might just see it as a cool film about what money and power can get you – basically more money and more power. To me this was a kind of morality play saying that getting what you want is less important than knowing what you want. To me it was saying that sex, money and power are all very nice but that’s not the point. I think that Eddie was just beginning to realise this (or was just about to start realising this) at the end of the movie. He was beyond the manipulation of others, had sorted out his supply issues and had conquered the side effects. Now he could start using NZT properly – if only he could figure out how to do that! Looking beyond the razzmatazz and deeper into the sub-text this was an interesting look at what it means to live in a modern capitalistic society and, more importantly, how not to live.