Neil Burger (The Illusionist, The Lucky Ones) hasn't previously displayed much of a personal style, but here he opens with street-level power-of-ten shots, his camera zooming forward, through people and vehicles alike. It's as if he were making up for lost time — just like his protagonist, Eddie Morra (Bradley Cooper), a disheveled novelist on a downward spiral until he pops NZT-48, a designer drug ($800 per pill!) that "doesn't make you high, just clear." "Enhanced Eddie" bangs out a book in four days, learns a new language in one, and cracks Wall Street's code, earning millions and attracting the attention of mega-mogul Carl Van Loon (Robert De Niro) — and a skin-filleting Slavic gangster (Andrew Howard). Another problem? Eddie will die without a daily dose of the dope that unlocks the unused 80 percent of his brain. Too bad Leslie Dixon tapped less than 20 percent of hers while penning her underdeveloped script.
