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A Beautiful Mind

Oscar™ Best Picture - Winning Movies

A Beautiful Mind

2001

Ron Howard

Russell Crowe, Jennifer Connelly, Ed Harris, Paul Bettany ...

7.5

121,394

Drama Obsessed with finding a truly original mathematical idea, the brilliant student John Forbes Nash (Russell Crowe) arrives at Princeton in 1947 for graduate study – as an outsider, a loner, a bit of an oddity. In a bar one night with his peers and contemplating a group of girls led by a tall blonde, the kernel of his theory on the mathematics of competition bursts forth. In contradiction of the eminent Adam Smith, Nash nonethless sticks ... [+]

	Author	Review
United States	A. O. Scott The New York Times	"The movie can -- indeed, should -- be intellectually rejected, but you can't quite banish it from your mind."	NEU
United States	Roger Ebert Chicago Sun-Times	"Crowe brings the character to life by sidestepping sensationalism and building with small behavioral details. (...) Rating: ★★★★ (out of 4)"	POS
United States	Todd McCarthy Variety	"Consistently engrossing as an unusual character study and as a trip to the mysterious border-crossing between rarified brilliance and madness, this serious-minded but lively film is distinguished by an exceptional performance by Russell Crowe."	POS
United States	Peter Travers Rolling Stone	"Sadly, Howard blands out in the final third, using old-age makeup and tear-jerking to turn a tough true story into something easily digestible. Until then, you'll be riveted."	NEU
United Kingdom	Adam Smith Empire	"Whether you can fully enjoy its many strengths depends on how comfortable you are with a real, tortured and ultimately tragic life being forced into Hollywood's formulaic straitjacket (...) Rating: ★★★ (out of 5)"	NEU
United Kingdom	Peter Bradshaw The Guardian	"Plodding, pedestrian (...) Nash's codes are just silly - and boring (...) It fails to find the mysticism in pure mathematics either"	NEG
United Kingdom	Nev Pierce BBC	"[Crowe] delivers another astonishing performance that more than compensates for this film's weaker facets (...) Who'd have thought algebra could be so exciting? (…) Rating: ★★★★ (out of 5)"	POS
United States	Scott Tobias AV Club	"The film seems totally unconvincing, squeezing a real life into a formula that's simultaneously more palatable and less interesting."	NEU
United States	Lisa Alspector Chicago Reader	"[It is an] inspirational narrative, but certain plot points are so reductive that their relationship to the facts of any real person's life (...) becomes one of convenience."	NEU
United Kingdom	Time Out	"[It sucks] us into the mind of a genius"	POS
United States	Ed Gonzalez Slant	"This is pre-fabricated Oscar dribble at its worst, condescendingly rewriting a life struggle as an easy-to-digest Lifetime movie of the week (…) Rating: ★ (out of 4)"	NEG

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