Bradley Cooper is on his way up – but not yet there

What you need to know:

Title: Hangover 2
Starring: Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, Zach Galifianakis
Director: Todd Phillips

A bracing story that examines what intelligence will and will not buy and what is the effect that such a drug would have on society, writes Eshban Kwesiga

Even though this film features Robert De Niro one of the biggest movie stars of our time, the real star here is Bradley Cooper. As much last year was good to him with movies like Hangover and The A-team, Bradley cooper is at the very risk of ending up like Ben Affleck as just another blue eyed good looking A-list movie star that makes a lot of money but lacks the credibility and respect enjoyed by actors like John Travolta. Luckily for Bradley Cooper this movie Limitless is a big step towards him being the big shot actor we hope we will become.

Limitless is the story of guy called Eddie Morra; a struggling writer with writer’s block that has nothing going for himself and basically a loser. The day he gets dumped, he meets his former brother in law who is also a drug dealer. This drug dealer offers him a small mysterious pill called NZT-48 to help Eddy with his writer’s block.

He reluctantly accepts the pill, moments later he swallows it. Instead of giving him the high he expected what NZT-48 does is that it allows you to access every random memory you have in your head, every single piece of information you might have come across in a half read article or listened to when partially watching a documentary 10 years ago. NZT-48 allows you to access all this information into a sparkling cocktail of practical and useful information - its works better if you are already smart.

This movie may not be as deeply intelligent as Inception however the people that made this movie nailed everything correctly, from the script to the casting to the directing to the production to the editing, even the lighting.

The curse of being a devilishly good looking actor is that sometimes your good looks can so distracting, audiences may fail to pay attention to anything else however this isn’t the case here. Because this film is about a loser who get transformed into an intimidating successful and suave person, this plot allows Bradley Cooper to show off his acting skills proving that he can easily and convincingly fit into both characters without breaking a sweat.

Surprisingly, the film rolls on for over 30 minutes without Robert De Niro making an appearance and when you watch the film to the end you realize that De Niro’s scenes as engaging and impacting as they were, they weren’t really that big. Under normal circumstances big shot A-list actors don’t show up to do a few lines and a few scenes.

All this just goes to prove one thing, in as much as this film was meant for Bradley Cooper, the casting directors understood that even though he is big, he isn’t big enough to sell out a movie theatre. So they added somebody with enough credibility and star power to fill out a theatre, a real crowd puller – Robert De Niro and this was a smart move.

A big chunk of the film rides on Bradley Coopers charm and charisma however in his scenes with De Niro, it’s only De Niro that shines. Once again reminding us what pure, beautiful and effortless acting looks like – De Niro is a true national.

One of the biggest problems this movie has faced it that it was one of the most anticipated movie of the year, and as it usually is with such films, they don’t live up to most people’s expectations. This isn’t the best movie of year, but it’s somewhere up there and will delight you on that lazy Sunday.