LIMITLESS, or AMERICAN PSYCHO-PHARMACOLOGICAL, is about that drug so popular amongst investment bankers, Adderall, disguised as a wonder pill that turns its taker into a super genius, based on the idea that we only use 10% of our brains, so what if we could use all of it? And have total recall of even the most mundane moments in memory? Such is the gift of the magic pill, which then our hero sleepy sad sack novelist Bradley Cooper gets hooked on and needs more of, and so do a lot of other (bad) people. The chase is on and the hangovers begin, paranoia steps up, loose ends are tied behind people's backs, and sheer stupidity rears its head.
The problem here is that Bradley Cooper and the filmmakers are afraid to go full AMERICAN PSYCHO, so a hinted at black-out murder is just a plotline dropped in time for the big climax of battling the usual baldheads. So instead of some bitter downward spiral wherein Cooper -- who plays a self-absorbed novelist initially too stupid to take an offered pill from his ex-brother-in-law--goes insane, we have him become a Tom Cruise-style action star. Once he does make the grade, so far so good, but on his big day presenting his portfolio to Robert De Niro's power-talking tycoon, he decides not to take a pill, like dumbass, so he's sick from withdrawal, and almost throws up on De Niro's thousand dollar loafers. Turns out he has a stash of pills at his girlfriend's house, but of course never dreams of getting it, because that would be too easy. Instead she (Abbie Cornish) has to get it, on her lunch hour, while he shivers like a crackhead in her office.
Trust me, no addict is that unprepared.
Don't doubt that I personally am similar and as we say in AA, had a lot of identification with Cooper's rise and fall. I was once a horribly blocked writer, tortured with longing, until my shrink put me on Effexor, and now I'm super-human on the keypad, writing so damn much my fingers fall off, smoking Camel Lights and guzzling diet coke and staying otherwise sober, for the kids, but always riding that low throbbing train of chemically-enhanced motivation and focus. Drugs have been overcoming writer's block since the dawn of pencils, of course, but that's not Bradley's problem. What sinks him and what is most unbelievable is that his girlfriend could be so dismayed that his newfound confidence isn't 'real,' since it was boosted by a substance. Listen lady, substances are the core of existence! We wouldn't even have civilization if not for coffee. We'd still be asleep, and cranky, in our thatched huts, hoping and dreaming that someone else will bring us some breakfast. But Cooper's refusal to remember he has pills around until it's time to try to take them to fight Russians is just not believable.
Imagine Popeye spending hours trying to open a can of spinach, his hands shaking, finally needing Olive to do it while he stammers through his teeth, an empty pipe in the corner of his clenched mouth. Not good. Popeye needs an open can ever at the ready, and so he has it. Has Bradley ever tried spinach? From a can? No, too cool for that; his spinach is fresh from Balducci's - all he needs is a little pill, and he's such a genius he can't even remember he's dead in the water without one.
I won't give away the ending, but I will tell you its needlessly happy, a validation of Hollywood's fetish for solipsism's comely victims. What the story cries out for is a finale reflecting the terrifying loss of control and sanity that comes from tampering too long with your brain chem--as in the endins of, say, AMERICAN PSYCHO (2000, top, bottom), where in the vapid clutches of Reese Weatherspoon, Bale comes to the realization that he has absolutely no idea if he's been dreaming or actually living all his murders, and she'll never even stop talking about herself long enough to notice if anything is ever wrong with him. Instead of that kind of ambiguity, LIMITLESS bears out the creepy douche bag feeling I used to get hanging out on certain Upper East Side AA meetings listening to a certain class of rich snobs fawn over their sobriety like humility is the very latest Coach bag. Why doesn't our super-enlightened Bradley figure out a cure for AIDS, or how to levitate, or remote view alien worlds, or make some draconian decision to wipe out half the population in a plague he's designed, carefully by hand, in order to make the world less crowded, ala LATHE OF HEAVEN? No, he drops the pen and goes right for the long green. What a tool.
In the end, this drug just kind of turns you into Tom Cruise, and for the Los Angeles power worshippers, assertive narcissism and total fearless confidence is everything. We love that trait like we love gangster movies, or mad scientists, or Hannibal Lecter, but you can't have your face and eat it too; you can't expect that Bradley alone is rising in the ranks in the realm of pill abuse. Where are all the others struggling for their smarty fix? In reality, pills like this come along all the time, but trouble is, everyone finds out about them and within a year taking it doesn't give you a leg up on the competition so much as barely keep you in it, hence steroid testing as a kind of treaty.
Fact is, Cooper's character seems pretty stupid to begin with, but he loves his drugs and we're supposed to be in awe of him irregardless of Abbie Cornish's disappointment. In the end we come away from the film perhaps angry at our own sloth and trapped potential, but there's a reason we shuttered the upper rooms of our brain mansion: there be monsters locked away up thar. Tread lightly, and bring a good therapist, or sponsor, or sword, or suffer the consequences. Unless, of course, you're Bradley Cooper, for not even the darkest demon can compete with the gravitic drag of such black hole vanity.
0 коментарі:
Дописати коментар