(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]