good, but not great

Rating: 6/10 (29 January 2002)

Overall I did enjoy this movie. Crowe was excellent portraying a troubled mathematician. However, the story of John Nash itself simply isn't all that interesting and one gets the impression that Hollywood is trying too hard to make a story out of nothing. I mean Nash's mental conditions was heavily emphasized throughout the film that it came across more on a movie about mental disorders. I wished the film devoted more time emphasizing Nash's contributions to mathematics and why his contributions were important. At the very end you do hear a bit about that but that was much too late after 2 hrs worth of riding through Nash's mental problems. This movie had chances to become really good, but instead of going deeper into explaining in layman's terms the contributions of Nash, so we can appreciate his "beautiful mind", we get carried away into Nash's nightmares and drowned for 2 hrs in Nash's mental state that could've been explained in 15 minutes. The movie echoed the sixth sense the way Nash's sees "people" around him all the time and it just got ridiculous in that aspect.