MyRating: YYYYDirector: Neil Burger
Cast: Bradley Cooper, Abbie Cornish, Robert De Niro, Andrew Howard, Anna Friel, Johnny Whitworth
MPAA: Rated PG-13 for thematic material involving a drug, violence including disturbing images, sexuality and language
What if you can step outside your limit and use 100% of your brain capacity, instead of 20% used by the average people? What if you can unlock all your hidden potentials and do the unthinkable things that the average people can only dream they do, and only sky is your limit? This is what happened to Eddie Morra (Bradley Cooper), a writter with hazy future, who has just been dumped by his girlfriend Lindy (Abbie Cornish). He suddenly discovers his self-awakening after taking a mysterious experimental pill, which makes him never the same again. Upon taking the drug, everything becomes clearer and brighter. His mind becomes smarter, focus and as sharp as knife, as he can easily grab and organize everything he has seen, read and heard, put them all into the right perspectives and use them for his benefits. He also can finish things faster as he can see and plan several steps ahead that makes him become very effective, which at the end makes him a better man.
Able to finish writing his book in a short period of time and stunned his editor, Eddie realizes that there are many other things that he can achieve with the pills. And when he gets access to more of the drugs, as each pill only has a short-time effect before he returns back to his normal state of mind, Eddie starts to enter the financial world and quickly rises to become the talk of the market. His overnight success draws the attention of Carl Van Loon (Robert De Niro), a powerful business mogul, who believes that hiring Eddie will bring more billions to his wealth. But everything has its price, as the drugs start to show harmful side effects on Eddie physically, which causes a setback to what he has achieved. To make things worse, he also suddenly becomes the target of hit men, as other parties also want to possess the pills. So, he needs to keep staying focus in order to stay alive, while consuming the drugs is slowly killing him.
This movie gets better and better as the plot moves. And once Eddie takes the pill, there is no turning back. An intriguing premise that was well executed on screen. The flash-forward scene in the beginning of the movie showing Eddie standing at the brink of the balcony of a high rise building, just one step away from falling down to the pavement below, was an effective start, before the story got a flash-back. And every action that Eddie takes, whenever he drinks the pills, will eventually lead him to that very critical moment of life and dead. On every great thing that he has achieved, it will finally cost him, big time, the only thing is he just doesn't know it yet. It's like signing an agreement with the devil.
The movie also has a good suspense that gets messier and messier as the story flows. And the plot smoothly brings us to the end fate of Eddie that is already waiting for him, while we follow his journey to unlock the mystery behind the drug, and at the same time he has to find a way out of his crisis and stay alive. The director offered unique visuals whenever Eddie takes the pills, to differentiate that the 'new' Eddie is in a different state of his mind, as his surroundings become brighter and colorful, as if changing to a brighter light bulb, and he can see and feel with all his senses, including words jumping up in the air while he reads.
As a man suddenly transformed from 'nothing' to become maybe the smartest guy on earth, Bradley Cooper gave a good performance that made the movie to become so enjoyable to watch, adding to the already interesting storyline. His strugglings between the 'old' Eddie and the 'new' Eddie and all his crisis were very well portrayed by him. As one of the most rising young actors nowadays, Cooper has what it needs to become an exciting leading man, not only because he has a good looking appearance, or a chaming smile, but also he has good acting capabilities that will make him shine even brighter in his future career. Besides that, he also has that 'relax' appearance, with a good sense of humors, that makes him always look comfortable on screen. While as the supporting actor, Robert De Niro added the weight to the cast as the slick and no nonsense businessman. This kind of role always fitted this senior actor well, who played it convincingly. It was nice to see a good collaboration between De Niro and Cooper, two actors from different generations.
The ending of this movie is the type of 'you guess it yourself', as it will add another mystery and question to be answered in your mind on the final turn-out. This is a great and highly entertaining movie. The story and the actors made it work well. For the closing, I will quote what Carl Van Loon said to Eddie Morra, "Your powers are a gift from God or whoever the hell wrote your life script." (MJ)
