Highly introverted mathematician goes bonkers searching for patterns.

Rating: 1/10 (29 August 1998)

Mathematics has come of age. There is now a bad mathematics movie to take it 's place among all the bad science movies. I was unable to suspend my disbelief so that I could sit back and enjoy the movie. I was put off by the silly mathematics, the cheesy props, (Max's "computer" is a collection of 1970s era ICs placed randomly in a 19" relay rack), the total lack of production values, ("Pi" makes the majority of this year's independent productions look like "Titanic"), and the silly plot.
Ostensibly this is a movie about obsession. The protagonist is seeking to find a pattern in the digits of pi which will explain the secrets of the universe. This search has already caused his mentor to have a stroke because he was getting close to the answer and Max is departing farther and farther from the real world. Max's computer is able to predict stock market prices. He is pursued by a collection of bad guys including a brokerage house, and a group of Hasidic Jews who think the messianic age will begin when they pronounce the 216 letter, true name of God. Come on! Before this guy does another movie about oncoming insanity, he should sit through Roman Polanski's "Repulsion" at least three times in a row.
Max's growing insanity is shown by increasingly bad camera angles as the film progresses. The lighting throughout looks as if it was done by Jim Varney playing Earnest. The print that I saw looked as if someone had generated it in their home darkroom. There is no excuse for this lack of technique. Spike Lee, Wayne Wang, and Hal Hartley have shown that you can make a first film for peanuts and it can still look good.
My advice is to go see something else.