Credit For Effort, But Far From Greatness

Rating: 6/10 (29 November 2010)

Granted, "A Beautiful Mind" is nowhere close to a classic and certainly not one of 2001's best film. But the hard work and effort put into this movie by Ron Howard and writer Akiva Goldsman should not go ignored. Especially Goldsman who was responsible for that god-awful fallacy that is "Batman and Robin". This biopic follows the life of mathematical genius with a mental illness, John Nash the many obstacles he conquered over the years. I won't delve into the plot too much as there's a major plot twist in the midway point of the movie that turns the tables on the scenes before it.
Heard from other people around me, "A Beautiful Mind" historical portrayal of John Nash is not 100% in terms of accuracy, but I was willing to forgive that knowing that a movie had many times before this one has utilized exaggerated dramatic effect to appeal to the mass. In fact, I'm giving praise of the structure it was to making this movie and what its intentions were which was to marvel at a mentally ill man's triumphs to win the prestigious Nobel Prize in 1994. So in way this movie can come across as a well-effort feel-good movie in its own merits.
Although hands off for the efforts of Howard's direction and Goldsman's script, it is not the real reason why this film is just average. I don't even think they should earned the Oscars awards they unceremoniously received. Howard lacks in subtlety and just can't get his grip on a simple planned drama. Many of the scene's emotional stages are overdone and cliché laden, like breaking stuff in anger, crying and pouting, nothing really new here. But to be fair I will say that the pacing was reasonable, and it feels as the scenes progress it looks very immaculate.
The last and final minutes is the weakest scene. Sure I was proud when Nash finally won the Nobel Prize, but it's the clichéd heartfelt speech that made me cringe and it clearly neglects what the movie was originally intended to accomplish. Sure Howard wasn't trying to spoonfeed us with how the film plods along, but to spoil us with the obvious message could have easily been handled earlier in the movie instead of dragging on for two hours.
Okay now that I've pointed most of the bad points of this movie, I still thought it had plenty to offer to the audience. It comes from the scintillating performances by Russell Crowe as mentally unbalanced John Nash and Jennifer Connolly as his wife Alicia Larde Nash who just amazed me and had me begging her for more screen time. It's a crying shame that we know very little about her and what she did in her lifetime that she was providing for him in his later years. Crowe captures the essence of Nash's character, but his tics look more like acting rather than playing it natural. There was a very meager love story between John and Alicia, and there's no purpose as to why she's smitten for Nash.
Schizophrenia is the main topic dealt with in the movie. And even though I have Aspberger's Syndrome, which is another mental illness, I have some knowledge of what it's like to carry a burden like what Mr. Nash carries. I guess I could say this movie fends off some of the misconceptions other movie's have dealt with on the topic of this illness this one might come the closest to being the most accurate in its portrayal.Sure it may have a Hollywood feel to the premise, the intentions of "A Beautiful Mind" are credited for taking the approach sensitively.