Crowe's Nash role slays Maximus

Rating: 9/10 (1 February 2002)

I found Russell Crowe's acting in this film to be superb. I think he did a more than adequate job as Maximus in Gladiator, but his work in Beautiful Mind is much more worthy of an Oscar win for Best Actor.
I know there are some hardcore critics that are upset with Ron Howard taking "liberties" with John Nash's real story. However, it did not take away from this being an OUTSTANDING film.
Howard did a stellar job in making Nash's paranoid-schizophrenic characters seem real. The chase scene and his paranoid trip to his backyard hideout were especially well done.
In the end, this film was much like Nash's theory which eventually won him the Nobel Prize- brilliant in parts, but not perfect. However, in the end the process of the theory and the process of the movie come together in the end to create a spectacle of a film.