Not all movies have to be black and white morality. This movie was obviously gray the whole way through. You weren't supposed to "like" the main character, you were supposed to follow along the story-telling experience to see how he got to that ledge, and then to see how he manages to keep that from happening again. Not to mention the "cheesy" parts you talk about are filming techniques. We can assume Eddie didn't *really* see letters fall from the ceiling, and we can assume Eddie didn't *really* split into multiple people during those couple of scenes. They were supposed to show us that for Eddie, his brain had opened up so much that it was *like* letters were falling from the ceiling, and that he was so focused that it was like he could accomplish by himself what would take many people normally. This movie did filming techniques and story-telling techniques that are not common, and it told a unique and interesting story while avoiding common cliches. For that, I'd gladly pay the eight bucks to see it again in theaters.
An unlikeable main character is harder to follow than a likeable one. Likeable doesn't necessarily imply good; the Godfather Part 2 is about an abusive and controlling crimelord who is far worse than Eddie, yet it manages to make his plight much more interesting. Hell, Michael even wins at the end too.
Also, the offscreen finding of a cure was ridiculous, especially since he somehow retains his abilities with the cure. It's essentially the movie just pulling our asses. Yes, the final conflict really was the scene with the mobsters, but a solution to all the main character's problems shouldn't be made offscreen with barely any foreshadowing (I'm building labs to make more of the drug=/=I'm building labs to find a cure).
We all know that they didn't really fall from the ceiling. However, the poor effects on the letters (Especially compared to the rest of the effects in the movie) made them feel like some commercial for a grammar program. It wasn't so much the idea as the execution.
The multiple Eddie's thing just felt rather silly, although I guess that may have been the point. That one wasn't really let down by effects, luckily.
I'll agree on this. It was a very unique movie, and it's definitely one that is either boring despite the great parts or exciting because of them. And now that I look at it again, the acting was much better than I gave it credit for.
Fight. Struggle. Endure. Suffer. LIVE.
Unless I missed something, Eddie didn't find a cure. He just made his own supply and then offscreen weaned himself off the drug while still finding a way to simulate the effects naturally. Not all that unbelievable if you conclude that the other users crashed because they were forced to quit "cold turkey", and that he found a way to retain what he learned when he had the drug.
Leave a Comment:
Limitless
After watching the film Limitless yesterday, I was struck by two things. One was that the premise is an awesome idea: What would happen if genius itself became an addiction, one that could kill you? The other was, "Well, he got off easy."
The movie begins In Medias Res, with our main protagonist, Eddie Morro, about to jump off a cliff as some very brutal people begin barging into his house. We then cutback a few months to find him a washed out writer, not even able to even start his book. Then an old friend comes and offers a miracle treatment: A pill called NZT that increases intelligence, memory, and understanding to enormous amounts. Eddie takes the pill, and our movie startys.
The camera work is pretty nice. I liked the transitions between normal Eddie's world (Drab colors, blue lighting) and uuber Eddie's world (Brightened colors, yellow lighting). Although some of the special effects for the effects of NZT are cheesy or ugly looking (Especially the letters falling from the ceiling), a lot of them were very exhiliarating (Such as the zooming camera through the city). The violence is a bit over the top, but is pretty well-handled; the only scene that didn't quite look right was when one of the Mafiya died and began bleeding Hershey's chocolate. The acting is okay, with the strongest performance by Robert De Niro's businessman character. The Eddie's actor varies; sometimes he can be very good, and at other times he gives vacant looks of Dull Surprise at inopportune moments. The rest of the cast is throughly average.
Unfortunately, this movie suffers from a real problem: The protagonist is a jackass. On the influence of NZT, he acts smug, manipulates several people including his girlfriend, makes deals with Russian gangsters, takes mind-altering drugs, and breaks into the business world just by being that good. His decisions all look as if they should have real, tangible consequences, and they do. However, at the end, we suffer an enormous asspull: The main character got off the drugs offscreen, but retained all the capabilities. Why? Because he came up with Phlebotinum offscreen. Fuck that.
It really says something about the film's protagonist when my favorite scenes are when people tell him off (De Niro's scene in particular was an epic The Reason You Suck Speech). I just couldn't like him, and thus I couldn't like the film.