Limitless (2011) 
 
 Is there a cure for writer’s block? (And no, “get a real job” doesn’t count.) A recent article in The New Yorker profiles a therapist who treats struggling screenwriters for hundreds of dollars an hour. For centuries, poorer scribes (which is to say most of us) have preferred to rely on rituals and folk remedies. Sharpen 10 pencils. Eat a sandwich. Pretend that the first chapter of your long-overdue opus is a casual letter to your grandmother. Weep quietly. Have another drink. 
 
 More recently, drugs like Adderall have enjoyed a half-shadowy vogue among writers. The dream of a pharmaceutical solution to literary paralysis provides a wisp of a real-world premise for “Limitless,” an energetic, enjoyably preposterous compound — it’s a paranoid thriller blended with pseudo-neuro-science fiction and catalyzed by a jolting dose of satire — directed by Neil Burger. Since we’re on the subject of writers, we should note that the script, adapted from Alan Glynn’s novel “The Dark Fields,” is by Leslie Dixon, whose résumé (“Mrs. Doubtfire,” “Pay It Forward,” and the remakes of “The Thomas Crown Affair” and “The Heartbreak Kid”) suggests a life of disciplined productivity. 
 
 Such an existence eludes Eddie Morra (Bradley Cooper), whom we join — once he has flashed back from what looks like the brink of suicide through a breathless title sequence — in a bohemian mire of failure. Unshaven and unfocused, living in a grungy Chinatown walkup and frequenting the last bar in Manhattan that does not brew its own bitters and charge $20 for an artisanal cocktail, Eddie is stuck on Page 1 of a long-overdue novel. 
 
 Adding romantic insult to professional injury, his girlfriend, Lindy (Abbie Cornish), briskly dumps him. As she hands him back her keys, Lindy cues up some important exposition by reminding Eddie that he was married once, to Melissa (Anna Friel), whose brother, Vernon (Johnny Whitworth), promptly runs into Eddie on the street, turns him on to a cool new drug and takes a fatal bullet to the brain. 
 
 Between the last two items in that series, Eddie swallows Vernon’s pill, a not-quite-legal substance called NZT, which allows him to tap into previously neglected areas of his brain. Supposedly, human beings — even writers! — use only a fraction of that mighty organ at a time, and the idea that we could, via a quick biochemical fix, have access to all of its powers raises many intriguing possibilities, a few of which “Limitless” sets out to explore. 
 
 Mr. Burger, whose previous films include “The Illusionist,” an elegant and clever sleight-of-hand caper, unwinds Eddie’s story with a feverish, hyperactive clarity that mirrors the protagonist’s inner state. When NZT enters his bloodstream, the colors on the screen intensify, the focus tightens, and the image seems to warp, as if buckling under the sheer power of Eddie’s cognition. 
 
 He assimilates information by means of old-fashioned film editing — a fast shuffle of close-ups, usually resolving to a shot of Mr. Cooper’s Windex-blue eyes — and also through fancier tricks. As Eddie’s writer’s block breaks, letters float down from the ceiling of his apartment, recalling the cascading numbers of “A Beautiful Mind.” 
 
 But Eddie’s mind is not an altogether pretty place. Mr. Cooper has a special gift for impersonating a certain type of ordinary guy — handsome, smart and friendly enough, but also kind of a jerk. More than “The Hangover” or, goodness knows, “All About Steve,” “Limitless” is a showcase for his gift of exemplary just-above-averageness. He is pitiable as a loser, despicable as a winner and curiously likable through all the intervening stages. 
 
 Granted the Promethean bounty of unlimited intelligence, what does Eddie do? Just what any other shallow, striving 21st-century American man would be likely to do: make more money, have more sex and write a book, though not quite in that order. The book turns out to be something of a red herring — or rather, one of many plot points that the movie picks up, drops behind the radiator, trips over and sends flying across the room as it runs its hectic course. 
 
 The expansion of Eddie’s mental capacity does not lead to any corresponding growth in wisdom or imagination. Quite the contrary: the more clearly and quickly he thinks, the shallower he becomes. To be sure, he learns to play the piano and picks up fluency in a smattering of foreign languages and high-flown cultural idioms, but these skills are mostly useful in getting women to sleep with him. And the cultural knowledge that is most handy comes from the kung fu movies and boxing matches he suddenly remembers from childhood when he is attacked by a bunch of thugs on a subway platform one night. 
 
 In keeping with Eddie’s predicament — and the drug has its downsides, of course — “Limitless” has a little too much on its mind. To maintain a sense of velocity and complication, it throws Eddie into trouble with a Russian loan shark (Andrew Howard), a couple of murders and a Wall Street tycoon with the Seussian name Van Loon. As Van Loon, Robert De Niro twinkles with menace but does not really have much to do, and he robs screen time from Ms. Cornish, who vanishes from the movie for unconscionably long stretches. 
 
 That is not because of Lindy’s good sense — she goes back to Eddie as soon as he cuts off his ratty ponytail and buys some new clothes — but because the filmmakers seem to have misplaced their supply of coherence pills. Too many matters, medical and otherwise, go unexplained, and the intimations of grand conspiracy that pursue Eddie don’t quite pay off the way you want them to. 
 
 But what “Limitless” lacks in structural neatness it makes up for in energy and antic, bristling wit. It’s an unexpectedly funny movie, and for a while this seems mainly like a function of Mr. Cooper’s charm. 
 
 Eddie’s fate, however, turns out to be a barbed and nasty joke, and at the last moment the film reveals itself to have been a seductively cynical, sharp-eyed comic fable for an age of greed and speed. It suggests that evolution has given us extraordinary brains, and that if someone could only take hold of this gift, there is no telling what he might do: engineer a corporate merger, run for political office, buy a huge apartment, order food at a restaurant in a foreign language. 
 
 Finish a piece of writing on deadline. Nothing would ever be the same. 
 
 “Limitless” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). Violence, sexuality and the consumption of prodigious quantities of an imaginary drug. 
 
 LIMITLESS 
 
 Opens on Friday nationwide. 
 
 Directed by Neil Burger; written by Leslie Dixon, based on the novel “The Dark Fields,” by Alan Glynn; director of photography, Jo Willems; edited by Naomi Geraghty; music by Paul Leonard-Morgan; production design by Patrizia von Brandenstein; costumes by Jenny Gering; produced by Ms. Dixon, Scott Kroopf and Ryan Kavanaugh; released by Relativity Media. Running time: 1 hour 46 minutes. 
 
 WITH: Bradley Cooper (Eddie Morra), Abbie Cornish (Lindy), Robert De Niro (Van Loon), Anna Friel (Melissa), Johnny Whitworth (Vernon) and Andrew Howard (Gennady). ||||| Limitless 
 
 March 16, 2011 
 
 Cast & Credits Eddie Morra Bradley Cooper 
 
 Carl Van Loon Robert De Niro 
 
 Lindy Abbie Cornish 
 
 Gennady Andrew Howard 
 
 Melissa Anna Friel 
 
 
 
 Relativity Media presents a film directed by Neil Burger. Written by Leslie Dixon, based on a novel by Alan Glynn. Running time: 105 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for thematic material involving a drug, violence including disturbing images, sexuality and language). Printer-friendly » 
 
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 I know how Eddie Morra feels. Like him, I know almost everything, but have forgotten most of it. We are told time and again that we use only a small portion of our brains and have enough left over to run nations in our down time. “Limitless” is about Eddie’s adventures after his ex-brother-in-law gives him a pill that suddenly puts his entire brain online. 
 
 He finishes his novel at typing speed. He wins at poker, invests in the market, and runs it up to millions. He fascinates a woman who had rejected him as a loser. He knows intuitively how to handle situations that used to baffle him. He is hailed as the Wall Street guru of the age. 
 
 
 
 Eddie is played by Bradley Cooper as a schlep who becomes a king. This sort of mental rags-to-riches progression has inspired a lot of movies; ever see Cliff Robertson in “Charly” (1968)? The difference here is that Eddie Mora remains himself before and after, and all that changes is his ability to recall everything he ever saw or heard. “Limitless” assumes that would be a benefit and make him rich, but what if most of what he ever saw or heard about Wall Street was wrong (as it usually is)? 
 
 
 
 The movie sidesteps the problem that what we need is more intelligence and a better ability to reason, not a better memory. For memory, modern man has Google. There’s no need to stumble over such technicalities, however; given its premise “Limitless” is passably entertaining. Abbie Cornish plays Lindy, the successful young professional woman who dumps Eddie as a loser and falls for him all over again when he becomes a winner. This is not sneaky on her part; there is every reason to dump the original Eddie and many good ones to return. 
 
 
 
 Eddie grows entangled in three problems. One has to do with the source of the magic pills; the brother-in-law is no longer in a position to reveal it. The second has to do with a mob loan shark who liked being smart and wants to get that way again. 
 
 
 
 The third involves Carl Van Loon, played by Robert De Niro as one of the richest men in America. He hires Eddie as an investment magician, Eddie loses his touch when he runs out of pills, he regains it, and so on. De Niro is not well used in the role, because he plays Van Loon straight and in one dimension. Don’t you suppose he could have been supplied with a quirk of his own? The twist at the end comes too late. 
 
 
 
 Bradley Cooper fits well into the two versions of Eddie Morra, and director Neil Burger does inventive visual effects in showing how time telescopes for Eddie and the answers to problems seem to materialize before his eyes. A subplot about a murder, however, raises questions it doesn’t answer, and all the quasi-criminal stuff seems a little perfunctory. The movie is not terrifically good, but the premise is intriguing; it doesn’t really set out to explore what such a pill might really to do a person. “Limitless” only uses 15, maybe 20 percent of its brain. Still, that’s more than a lot of movies do.
– Limitless, in which Bradley Cooper plays a struggling writer who takes a pill to vastly expand his brain power, may not exactly be award-worthy—but critics agree it's a fun ride: In the New York Times, AO Scott calls the movie “an energetic, enjoyably preposterous compound—it’s a paranoid thriller blended with pseudo-neuro-science fiction and catalyzed by a jolting dose of satire.” But, he notes, sometimes “the filmmakers seem to have misplaced their supply of coherence pills.” Peter Travers observes that “the plot hits some nasty speed bumps, and the ending is rote. But getting there is terrific,” he writes in Rolling Stone. “Watching Eddie flex his brain cells delivers a kick on par with Spider-Man testing his skills with small skips and jumps until he is leaping across rooftops.” Notes Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times: “Limitless only uses 15%, maybe 20% of its brain. Still, that’s more than a lot of movies do.”