Author: Luca Rescigno
Date: 5/1/02
Rating: 9.0
Movie Rating: R
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I recently went to see the new movie A Beautiful Mind, directed by Ron Howard and starring Russell Crowe, Ed Harris, and Jennifer Connelly. It's about the schizophrenic mathematical genius John Nash. I don't know the story of John Nash himself, and I've heard that the accuracy leaves something to be desired, so I'm glad that I didn't know anything about Nash before seeing the movie.
The movie, although it may be inaccurate, is very good. There are numerous plot twists and a lot of suspense, so it's very exciting and gripping. I was rarely bored with the movie. As a little extra bonus, it takes place in the fifties, so there are a lot of fun old cars which I really enjoy.
The story goes something like this: Nash is a student at Princeton University, and he's trying his hardest to come up with an original idea in the area of mathematics to study. He's very much an introvert and he doesn't have any real friends except his roommate. Finally, after a lot of time and a lot of stress, he comes up with a good idea and is hailed as a genius. He gets a job at the Pentagon as a codebreaker, because of his uncanny talent for finding patterns in seemingly random jumbles of letters and numbers. However, his job becomes a liability, and the Russians are after his life. He eventually gets to the point where he can't take it anymore, and then there's a really big surprise - one which I won't reveal now.
A Beautiful Mind is not only a great movie, with suspense, action, and drama, but it also raises some interesting post-movie questions. I went there with a philosophy group, and we all noticed how it really made us think about things like the difference between dreams and reality, etc. It's a wonderfully entertaining and thought-provoking movie.
I'd give the story an eight out of ten, and the presentation would be a nine out of ten, but overall I'd still give the movie a nine out of ten. I'd say it's worth your seven bucks to go see it.