Thought-provoking psychological thriller

Rating: Null/10 (31 January 2000)

Damned good movie... one of the best I've ever seen.
If you're a perfectionist, you can pick this film to death, but that exactly misses the point. There is a great message worked into this movie--that it's easy to miss out on the beauty of life if you focus too finely on any one part of it. Many people who criticize this movie on this comments board were obviously looking for particular things in Pi instead of appreciating it for its whole, which in my mind is a thought-provoking masterpiece.
Better yet, there are dozens of ways the lesson in finding beauty comes across, from the subtle (ant squishing) to the obvious (brain drilling). And although experts in mathematics may find some of the cool math plot devices in this movie to be trite, there are just so many subtleties and layers in the movie waiting to be discovered on the third or fourth viewing.
(The kids coming down the spiral staircase as Max gets out his microscope to examine compu-plasm? Or did anyone bother to calculate the division problem that the little girl asks Max at the end of the movie and contemplate the fact that he's unable to figure it out? Do the math, and find added irony in the fact that post-epiphany, Max sees the girl's smile, but doesn't recognize pi when it's staring him in the face.)