Aronofsky debut

Rating: 8/10 (30 May 2016)

Maximillian Cohen is sickly and math obsessed. He is building his Euclid computer in his small New York apartment as a way to understand and predict the world. Sol Robeson is his mentor. Religious Jew Lenny Meyer introduces him to the mathematical nature of Hebrew and the Torah. He finds that the computer predicted the correct stock price. He is also hounded by Marcy Dawson from a powerful financial consortium. They offer him a supercomputer chip. The computer outputs a number and everybody wants it.
This is a debut from Darren Aronofsky with great originality. It has great paranoid thriller vibe. The music, the style, and Max all build a great obsessive mood. There are some things to nit-pick. The camera work is strictly indie. The action scenes are a little dizzying and not in a good way. It's unlikely that Aronofsky had the equipment to do better although some low-budget indies do better somehow. The acting from some of the secondary characters could also be better. They are all understandable indie deficiencies.