6. Limitless
The inspiration from this piece came from an earlier article, when I was claiming that Limitless made drug addiction look awesome. I've come back to it here because I loved the main lesson it teaches the audience drug addiction is bad, but occasionally the only way out is through more drugs. Limitless is a B-plus film that rattles along at a slick pace and is expertly put together, but more than anything else, it was the character arc that stuck with me. It follows the plot beats of any other cautionary tale man finds drugs, finds drugs awesome but then comes to see them as a horrible hindrance. But it's at Eddie's nadir that the whole thing changes somewhat. Rather than realising the error of his ways and swearing off those awesome clear pills a lesson surely relevant after you've drunk someone's blood for a boost he gets straight back on the horse and abuses it further. This shows one clear message Bradley Cooper's Eddie Mora doesn't learn a damn thing from his escapades with NZT, except how bleeding awesome it is. For him, it doesn't matter how bad things get, because the way out always involves more drugs. It's a bit of a wacky, ballsy message and entirely at odds with the desperate actions the pills inspires remember, this is the film where Abbie Cornish wields an actual human child as a weapon to fend off a drug-related attacker, yet all this awfulness get swept under the carpet for Eddie's continued adventures on the now much less harmful drugs.