This film left me disappointed.

Rating: 5/10 (25 June 2002)

My friends highly recommended "A Beautiful Mind," saying that it was a great movie that left some of them bawling at the end. However, I failed to see why this film has gathered so much praise and is being hailed as one of the best movies of all time.
Russell Crowe did perform well and convincingly portrayed a "crazy" man. However, I felt no emotion throughout the film and only teared up when I saw that poor imaginary girl cry. Anything can make me cry...but only the sight of the little innocent face was able to evoke my tears in this work. I observed the struggles and pain that Alicia Nash had to endure but the film still failed to emotionally involve me. Occasionally, I wondered when the film would end as it seemed to drag on. The screenplay didn't seem spectacular and the film could have done a better job conveying the actual importance of Nash's accomplishments. From just watching the film, I didn't really understand why Nash received the Nobel Prize or what it was that made Mr. Nash so special. Maybe Akiva Goldsman's intention was to focus on the "power of love" during difficult times. Nash's character needed more definition and development as the film's drama was just like any other old drama in other films. The only difference that this film had from others was that it had a schizophrenic based on a true character and a younger wife suffering from the marriage she entered. Basically, I view it as a love story with a total of three scenes of flirting and then a woman having to put up with her psycho husband - who ends up smacking her down by accident and nearly drowning their baby. That was it. Oh yeah, the woman sticks with him for forty years that the audience barely gets to see. As for the main character, he makes some hilarious remarks, scribbles furiously, observes pigeons, cuts up magazines, gradually descends into madness, fights the Russians in his mind, takes steps toward improvement, gets himself into a hospital, digs his way into his arm searching for a mysterious code implant, ignores his imaginary friends, and then wins the Nobel Prize. Great! Just great. There was just something missing in that mix that would have made it more appealing to me. If it was supposed to be capitalizing on the Nashs' struggles, it could have had stronger and more developed relations/scenes between John and Alicia. A little more background on both of the characters would not have hurt as it was already so long. At the end, I was alarmed that Nash had already became so old. I was worried that I had missed the good part and anxiously awaited the last scenes. Was the scene where he got all of those pens supposed to make me cry? Why was he so respected again? The film never really told me.
Overall, the film was ...average. The few moments of comedy was actually better than the slow and unengaging drama that made my head hurt. I don't know anything more about John Nash than I did before I viewed the film. It doesn't deserve to be in the top 250.