Running time: 104 mins. Starring: Bradley Cooper, Abbie Cornish, Robert De Niro, Anna Friel, Johnny Whitworth, Andrew Howard. Director: Neil Burger.

The drugs do work in Neil Burger’s visually arresting morality tale, set on the bustling streets of modern day New York.

However, narcotic nirvana comes at a price.

According to popular myth, humans only use 10 to 20 per cent of their total brain power — a startling statistic without any grounding in documented scientific fact.

Imagine the huge leaps and bounds that could be achieved in science and the arts if we could somehow energise those supposedly dormant synapses.

Alan Glynn’s debut novel, The Dark Fields, invented a fictitious wonder drug that could do just that — reboot the brain — and imagined the repercussions for an avaricious modern society.

Screenwriter Leslie Dixon adapts the book to the big screen as an (im)morality tale about a struggling writer, who has the whole world in his hands and selfishly squanders this remarkable gift to indulge in the excesses of 21st century life.

Eddie Morra (Bradley Cooper) has been wrestling with writer’s block for weeks and now his girlfriend Lindy (Abbie Cornish) has finally given up on him.

At his lowest ebb, Eddie meets his former brother-in-law, Vernon (Johnny Whitworth), who furnishes the struggling writer with a wonder pill called NZT, which reportedly increases brain activity and unleashes untapped creativity.