Pi should score no higher than 3.14

Rating: 3/10 (28 July 2001)

I'd heard about this movie after reading an article where a formula was discovered to let users calculate the nth digit of pi without having to calculate any of the previous digits. As interested as I was to see this movie is about as dismayed as I am after having seen it.
This movie contains all the right elements--pi, randomness, number theory, stock market chaos (the theory, not the traders) and the players that would likely be found in those fields. But like your mother's cut-up spaghetti, none of the ends tie together in this movie.
The movie is shot in grainy, high-contrast black and white. Some may call it stylistic; I thought it was plainly harsh on the eyes. There's a reason Hollywood has pursued different film types since the days of Buster Keaton. According to the commentary on the DVD I rented, the director stated that he wanted to "let viewers see this movie from the perspective of Max's brain." I think a better question is why anyone would _want_ to get in Max's paranoid, delusional, headache-prone brain.
The film attempts to bond together the Kabbalah (Jewish numerical mysticism), the stock market fluctuations, pi (and its randomness) and Nature's cycles. But like cheap glue it fails. The subplot of Wall Street thugs bent on discovering a market forecaster is both unexplained and implausible. The supercomputer Max has apparently built from discarded computer parts is barely possible, and strangely prone to a few stray ants. One funny moment comes when Max's former teacher, Saul, explains to him that the 216-digit number spit out by his computer before it crashed was a form of silicon consciousness. Unfortunately, it wasn't meant to be funny. The only plausible plot in this movie is that of the Kabbalah number theorists, but the movie spends more time explaining who they are than what their mission is about.
In the end, the movie Pi leaves as many questions unanswered as there are digits of the number left to compute. Unlike Conspiracy Theory and Enemy of the State, two paranoid movies which give credence to conspiracists, Pi offers no explanations for its unfathomable conjectures. I was simply left to wonder why I wasted the last 85 minutes of my life.