Bradley Cooper plays a guy who takes a drug that makes him really smart. Of course for a guy with such a high IQ you'd think he'd foresee what would happen to him but I guess the director Neil Burger and screenwriter Leslie Dixon expect their audience to be pretty dumb. Somehow, even with this issue, this film succeeds as a slick entertainment with strong performances and an ending that cleans up any potential plot holes. I'll have to check out the novel its based on by Alan Glynn called The Dark Fields. Grade: B+.
Spoiler: I have two pet peeves with this film. One is the notion that we as human beings can only access 10% of our brain. This cliche overused in many science fiction films is a myth that's been proved false. We do access our entire brains but for some reason this cliche is still being used when it's an easy fix: just makeup some pseudo science to explain it, be clever folks. The second pet peeve I have is that the entire time I'm watching the movie I'm thinking, "Why doesn't this guy uses his new found brain to figure out where the drug comes from so he can learn more about it. Actually he does this but we the audience are kept in the dark about this until the end. Okay, I see you want to surprise us, but the affect is I'm spending the entire movie rolling my eyes thinking how stupid this movie is. I'm not sure if that's a good idea. I'm also not sure if I like a film that glorifies the use of drugs to improve our lives but that's just a minor morality thing, no big deal.
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