Jack The Scribbler

(Or why Limitless is limited and all other bad puns mediocre movie reviewers such as myself are likely to conjure, given their — uhm — limited imaginations and vocabularies).

SPOILER ALERT: If you haven’t seen the movie yet, don’t go any further. This is your final warning. Go check your Facebook account or something.

Limitless is a minor disappointment. [See: Limitless]
The movie was unable to bring about an appropriate ending for what — at least for the first two-thirds of it — appears to be an interesting enough premise.
Edward Morra (played by Brandon Cooper), a struggling writer, ingests a mysterious pill called NZT-48 that increases his intelligence.
While under the influence for the very first time, he helps his landlord’s wife write a paper for her law class.
As a reward, he gets a piece of extramarital action.
But that’s not all.
Within one week, Morra is able to finish a novel that he’s been planning to write for months and uses his fee to invest in stocks.
He trades online, quintuples his investment on a daily basis, and borrows more money from Gennady, a Russian mobster (played by Andrew Howard) who would later demand his share of his NZT stash.
Morra is later employed by business big-shot Carl Van Loon (played by Robert De Niro) after turning $100,000 into $2 million.*
During a meeting in Van Loon’s car, Mora comes on strong, correctly predicting a proposed merger involving the former’s company and another firm.  Impressed, Van Loon invites him to be part of an inner circle to work out the merger.
After partying for 18 hours straight, he crashes, forcing him to leave a meeting with an exasperated Van Loon, especially after discovering his stash has run out.
He later recovers but only after he wards off attackers and overcomes a string of setbacks.
At its very basic, the movie is a fun ride, except for some occasional potholes, including…

1) Flawed building security.

After helping out with the Van Loon merger, Morra buys an $8.2 million-condominium, which his broker says is a Fortress With a View. Complete with cameras and thick doors, it looks as if it offers the best in security.
However, it proved powerless against a regular chain saw and three bumbling, middle-aged Russian mobsters, one of whom is blind in one eye and the other, a poor shot.
Which just goes to show you how trustworthy real-estate professionals are these days.
But for argument’s sake: Having taken the pill himself, Gennady, as the head of the team, could have figured out a way to smuggle equipment and go through building security.
Except that the building wasn’t exactly staffed by the Keystone Cops nor the Manila Police. So why weren’t the NYPD and/or security personnel informed about the intrusion immediately?

2) Flawed survival technique.

Before planning to torture Morra to find out where he kept the rest of his stash (which by this time had run out), Gennady decides to inject himself with a liquid version of the pill that he himself developed.
With some luck and a large knife, Morra is able to kill all his Russian attackers.
How?
By drinking some of Gennady’s fresh blood which still contained the pill’s potent doses. Sigh.

3) Flawed motivation.

Mora is neither a hero or an anti-hero.
He’s somewhere in between, to paraphrase Woody Allen.
After surviving the attack on his fortress, Morra decides to — you guessed it — run for the US Senate, to supposedly do something “good,” whatever that is.
No mention is made about his party affiliations nor his platform.
Morra’s transformation from financial genius to political candidate is contrived, a put-on, a device the producers used to allow for a happy ending.
Compared to what Michael Bloomberg did to transform himself to become New York City Mayor, Morra’s just an act and a cheap one at that.
It makes you wonder why Van Loon ever bothered to seek the candidate’s favor at all. Double sigh.

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*All without the help of the Philippine military and its generals, including former comptrollers Jacinto Ligot and Carlos Garcia. [See: Ligot, Garcia]

Waste of time, money, if you ask me. ( Pic from Wikipedia)

By no means is George Clooney ugly.
And I say that as a Filipino male who has an unblemished record of staunch heterosexuality (to quote my fictional idol also named George, Jerry Seinfeld’s best friend, Costanza). [See: More of George Costanza and his quote.]
However, Clooney’s latest film — The American directed by Anton Corbijn — is another matter altogether.
The movie sucks big time.
And no amount of interesting babes — the movie has two: an assassin and a call girl — can make up for the energy, patience, and expense moviegoers incurred to see it.
For the first fifteen or so minutes, the movie progresses along nicely, helping clarify character motivation, establish narrative action, and build cinematic tension.
Clooney, an American hitman, manages to eliminate a killer out to get him while in Sweden. After meeting his principal in Rome, he is told to cool his heels in an Italian town.
And that marks the time the movie jumps the shark, so to speak. [See: Jump the shark]
Posing as a photographer, the taciturn protagonist goes around the village, sharing drinks and meals with the parish priest and visiting a call girl in the next town.
No witty one-liners nor smart barbs are traded between the characters, further blunting whatever passes for narrative movement in this movie.
Moreover, as Clooney does his best to protect his cover, viewers are treated to the town’s rustic offerings, a river, a field, and an overview of an oddly-shaped highway.
As individual images, they’re fodder for Flickr.com.
But scenes on an image hosting website does not a movie make.
These arguably picturesque views do nothing but to exhaust the tolerance of the audience, many of whom have been tricked into expecting some kind of action.
Unfortunately, that doesn’t take place until the film’s last 10 minutes.
And by that time, the audience is already way too sleepy to care.
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From the Fine Print Dept. The title of this blog entry was taken from a 1958 novel of the same name, which later became a movie starring Marlon Brando.

The Fabulous Baker Boys, a romance drama starring Jeff Bridges and Michelle Pfeiffer, temporarily interrupted my teenage angst.
How?

For one thing, I was nearly through my teenage years when the movie was shown in Manila sometime in 1990 (initial release in the US was on October 13, 1989).
Second, I immediately fell in love with the movie’s theme song, entitled Jack’s Theme, composed by Dave Grusin, since it encapsulates the rhythm of the City, however American.
At that point in my life, when I religiously saw Moonlighting — starring Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd — and the cartoon version of the Ghostbusters (both shown on ABS-CBN), I wanted to be Jack Baker.
Except that I had renounced piano lessons years earlier in favor of tennis.
What good has that decision brought me?
Nothing except to show that I’m a sap for a really good romantic drama movie. If you haven’t seen it, I suggest you do. It’s soundtrack’s not bad too. I got one a decade or so after the movie was released. Apparently, the CD is so  good, it was never returned.

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Picture on the upper right is a screen grab from the movie. Lucky bastard behind Michelle Pfeiffer is Jeff Bridges. Now you know why I want to be Jack Baker. For some reason, I can’t upload nor post a video. FT. Will let you know my progress in this matter. Ugh.