Review: Bradley Cooper might keep ‘Limitless’ from becoming another high-concept film turned crime procedural

The fate of the new CBS series “Limitless” rests almost entirely on Bradley Cooper.

Not because he’s a big movie star and his eyes are so darn blue or because he starred in the film of the same name and is the force behind the sequel series, which premieres Tuesday.

No, the success of “Limitless” depends on Cooper because he plays the same character in the series as he did in the film. And that role, Eddie Morra, is what will or won’t keep “Limitless” from becoming just another high-concept film turned crime procedural (see also “Minority Report”).

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Adapted by Craig Sweeny, the series opens with a fast-paced, sure-footed pilot that tells the same essential story as the film. Brian Finch (Jake McDorman) is a good-hearted slacker, purportedly pursuing a music career but mainly just temping and feeling sorry for himself. When a friend offers him a pill that would allow Brian to access every part of his brain, Brian is dubious, but he takes it, and, voilà, he becomes a mental superhero.

The series borrows many visual conceits from the film — Brian literally sees the world in a new light, with the tight, tunnel-vision focus of a camera lens — but director Marc Webb has much more fun with them; a montage of Brian’s new life is as much a rush for the audience as it is for the character.

Obviously, we are going to need more pills.

Just as obviously, this is going to be a problem. In search of more NZT pills, Brian discovers that his friend has been murdered. FBI agents on the scene suspect Brian, who makes a dramatic escape mostly because Special Agent Rebecca Harris (Jennifer Carpenter) sees something in his eyes that makes her believe he is not the killer. (Thanks to a predictable but still-welcome plot twist, this is nowhere near as cheesy as it sounds.)

As it turns out, the FBI knows all about NZT, including its fatal effects on those who take it. Brian now needs the drug, and Rebecca’s help, to clear his name, but he also needs something to keep the drug from destroying him.

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Enter Eddie Morra (Cooper), who when last seen in “Limitless” the film, was defying the drug’s fatal side effects and was on a path to political power.

He will help Brian for a price, to be named later, and that is the story line that will make or break “Limitless.”

McDorman is solid as an Everyman-turned-Superhuman, and Carpenter, who consistently stole “Dexter” from its titular lead, is perhaps the most welcome sight of the fall. Still, one can’t help wishing she were in a more inspired role and a less worked-over concept.

Josh Holloway just did a version of this in the short-lived “Intelligence,” and there are already plenty of smarty-pants guys with nifty camerawork to show their lightning thought processes on television (Sherlock Holmes, just to name two). Carpenter and whatever chemistry the two leads have will not be enough to separate “Limitless” from the stack of new and returning high-concept procedurals.

Also, as many have noted, there is something undeniably disturbing about a show that celebrates better living through mind-altering pharmaceuticals.

That’s why Cooper’s Morra is so important. As a product of that drug, he is the über-narrative.

Rebecca may have her own agenda, as does her boss, played by Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, which suggests she isn’t there to simply make assignments. But Morra is the key. Only if his story is something more complicated and compelling than “power corrupts and drug-aided power corrupts more quickly” can “Limitless” transcend its initial limitations.

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‘Limitless’

Where: CBS

When: 10 p.m. Tuesday

Rating: TV-14-LV (may be unsuitable for children under age 14 with advisories for coarse language and violence)

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