What if you could exceed your wildest dreams? What if you could play classical piano, speak several languages, know how to play Wall Street, tackle anybody in political debates and maybe always get the girl? And what if a clear pill – just like a daily vitamin – was the key to all of it. Granted the pill might not be FDA approved just yet, but what’s he got to lose? Afterall – he – Eddie (Bradley Cooper) narrates a film about a guy – himself – whose first scene opens with him on the ledge of his skyrise penthouse apartment. The story goes back to his simple Bohemian beginnings where Eddie was a wanna-be novelist schlepping around the East Village. The only thing he had going for himself was his girlfriend, Libby (Abbie Cornish)who has just dumped him. But when his ex brother-in-law, an otherwise useless relationship, offers him the answer to life’s secrets in the form of a pill, Eddie tries it. The pill allows him to access all of his brain power. He’s not wired, he’s not high, but he’s very clean of thought process. But, alas, anything too good to be true probably is, and that’s where our story begins to twist and turn its way downhill and uphill and all over Manhattan. Carl Van Loon (Robert DeNiro) seems to be the tycoon entrepreneur with all the answers (and then some.) A fascinating thriller with provocative, crafty dialog thanks to screenplay from Leslie Dixon (hard to imagine a woman wrote such a man’s film)the story shows us that being invincible is maybe not where it’s at. Cooper’s blue eyes illuminate seriously enough to match his verbal jargon, moving him out of frat house boy. And when this film ends where it all began – on the ledge of a building – it goes a full four tiaras worth. Not only the best movie so far this year, but Bradley Cooper is no longer “one of the dudes from The Hangover.” He’s now an A list movie star. Four tiaras
