Monday 9 April 2012

A Beautiful Mind (2001) 8/10

Starring : Russell Crowe, Ed Harris, Jennifer Connelly, Christopher Plummer, Paul Bettany
Director : Ron Howard
Running Time : 136 mins

It’s 1947, and genius mathematics student John Nash (Crowe) is snapped up from his studies at Princeton to work in cryptography for the American government, but this work exacerbates his paranoid delusions and he starts to imagine that Russian agents are out to get him, and soon it becomes apparent that his delusions are nothing new when it is revealed that his old college roommate Charles (Bettany) never existed.

Russell Crowe is incredibly good in the fictionalised biopic on the life of Nobel Prize Winner John Nash. His performance is perfectly manic and twitchy for the schizophrenic he is playing, and he manages to make use believe he actually is seeing his delusions throughout the movie. Ron Howard manages to pull off a Sixth Sense / Fight Club style manoeuvre by having Paul Bettany’s character appear in scenes where he doesn’t interact with anyone as he doesn’t exist, but it is a shame that Hollywood had to resort to these untrue visions to try to make this more entertaining.

You’ll like this if you liked : Enigma



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