A Beautiful Mindlessness

Rating: Null/10 (21 January 2002)

I enjoyed this movie and agree with most of the comments I have read. However, I do have a strong reservation.
Ron Howard has chosen a story with an all-too-familiar plot: misunderstood outsider succeeds famously. And with a typical Hollywood-Academy-Award treatment, he focuses on charm and action rather than portray anything that might challenge us to think and understand. Exactly what was it that Nash produced which led to the Nobel Prize? We have no clue. Instead we're treated to clever dialog, wild action scenes, guns, and car chases, emotional trauma, and occasional, eccentric mathematical scribbling on windows which is supposed to convey profundity. The reason Nash's biography is more interesting than most is the influential theories he developed. Emptying the piece of this intellectual content insults our intelligence and undermines the deep significance of the story.