Limitless (Neil Burger, 2011)

This lively if superficial thriller presents Eddie Morra, a wastrel writer paralysed by writer's block, whose luck appears to have turned when a chance meeting with his brother-in-law leads to him trying a cerebral superdrug which gives him the ability of instant recall of everything he has ever subconsciously witnessed. Armed with this power he's soon on the way to finishing his novel, in the black, rebuilding his last relationship and astounding the world of finance with his stock market predictions. But of course there's no such thing as a free lunch and murder of his brother-in-law is only the beginning of his perils, with a gangster and another sinister pursuer after his misbegotten panacea, which predictably also turns out to have unpleasant side effects.
The anodyne Bradley Cooper is cast usefully for once here: his perpetual smirk and glibly slick delivery are a perfect fit for an amorally opportunistic character who weasels his way through challenges without ever turning virtuous. This lack of enlightenment makes a refreshing change from the genre norm. Also intriguingly, the enslaving poison - at least at the outset - disarmingly displays none of the standard downsides, bringing wealth and focus as opposed to penury and derangement, which actually makes the protagonist's chemical dependency rather seductive.
It's still hokum, of course, requiring a ludicrous number of improbabilities to be swallowed, such as Morra's discovery that merely having watched kung-fu films has made him an expert fighter (in Oldboy this also required 15 years of physical training) or that writing a great novel is simply a matter of command of language. But hokum that motors along nicely all the same.

6/10