Limitless has been brought to you by Charlie Sheen. All joking aside, this is a damn entertaining film if a tad reckless. There will be those who refuse to defend it because of it's apparent pro-drug use stance, but I'm not one of those people. In Limitless, Bradley Cooper plays a down on his luck writer whose creative juices hit a sky high after he takes a top secret "smart drug." It seems that this particular drug enables its user to access a larger percentage of their brain power. As fate would have it, there are others who want the drug as well thereby plunging Cooper's life into immediate danger. Director Neil Burger (The Illusionist) has fashioned a highly energetic thriller with a unique visual flair. Look no further than the opening sequence in which Burger incorporates a camera trick that I'm still trying to wrap my head around.

The film is well paced (and well shot) and it has a chaotic tone that, at times, reminded me of the works of Charlie Kaufman (most notably, Adaptation). This isn't to say Limitless is in the same league as Adaptation. It's every bit as offbeat but it lacks the consistency of that odd but memorable movie. Holding Limitless together is a charismatic Bradley Cooper who emerges as an honest to goodness leading man. He's so engaging that he manages to make even the most over the top of proceedings believable enough. From his early moments in the picture as a scruffy looking writer without much to live for, to his brash, cocksure intellectual with a brilliant mind for business, Cooper hits all the right notes and I don't know that he's ever been this entertaining in a movie. While its clear that some studio tampering has been done here (certainly, this feels like the kind of picture that was trimmed from an R to a PG-13), it's nice to see this creative film proving itself at the box-office. At the end of the day, its all about "winning". and that's what Limitless is doing. Just like Charlie.