Excellent, touching film with one flaw

Rating: 9/10 (12 February 2002)

Russell Crowe is amazing in this role as John Nash, a super geek. The sense of humanity and impending tragedy is gripping. You really feel for the mathematician as his problems worsen. That Nash is able to eke out so much triumph from his troubled life is a tremendous affirmation of the human spirit. It's based on a true story, but rather large liberties were taken with the story as it is told in the book. That's not really a bad thing, but somebody involved with the making of this movie did make a bad decision to use a rather common trick these days, used in movies as varied as "Sixth Sense" and "Sliding Doors." The trick involves presenting the audience with a point of view other than the standard movie narrative. The mistake made in this movie is that the view of Nash's hallucinations is presented so that the audience thinks there's a conspiracy for most of the movie. This probably made the movie more commercial, but it deflected the audience from the real drama in the story.