Limitless: Morally Stunted

The protagonist (Brad Cooper) starts out as a lazy, feckless loser with ratty hair and winds up a U.S. senator with a $200 haircut.

In between he lies, steals, cheats on his girlfriend with a woman he probably killed, and knifes his mentors in the back. But it can all be blamed/credited to a drug he's taken called NZT that miraculously allows him to use 100% of his brain, and thus he bests all adversaries, including corporate monster Robert DeNiro. Others who have taken the drug are addled, have bad hair, and are dying, but Cooper figures out a way in the end to avoid any of those downsides, instead rising higher and higher, and keeping his coifs glossy.

And the ultimate, noble goal, according to this film? Being a politician. Bill Cosby once said that when a friend offered him cocaine, he asked what its effects were. "It intensifies your personality," the friend said. Cosby retorted,"What if you're an asshole?" Exactly.

This movie is wrong on so many levels, I can only list them:

1) It says that, instead of hard work and effort, there is a magic pill that will make you successful;
2) You will be the only one with this advantage, and everyone else will be playing catch-up;
3) It doesn't matter what you do on the way up, so long as your motives are pure (selfish self-advancement is sufficient);
4) The highest calling is not making money, giving others around you a chance to work hard and succeed, but is politics, in which you, by virtue of your virtue, will decree goodness in everyone's life, and do it without personal risk or spending a penny of your own;
5) Romantic relationships will survive even murder, so long as you have a great haircut, look fantastic, and have lots of money (c.f., Charlie Sheen);
6) Brain power, not morals, is the key to success; and
7) Hollywood hates you and your pathetic, lower-middle-class work ethic.

But surely, you're already taking the real NZT, which is living with the consequences of your acts, and you already knew all this.