Director: Ron Howard
Starring: Russell Crowe,Jennifer Connelly,Ed Harris
While I was at Harvard, I was rumored to have been an Economics major. And I remember something about a Nash equilibrium that won the Nobel Prize in Economics. To be quite honest, I don’t remember what it was, except that it went to some dude at Princeton. But I’m sure I’d know what Nash theorem was had I attended class on a semi-regular basis.
Russell Crowe had a string of great movies. We’ll give him a pass on the one he did with Meg Ryan. Aside from that, his last few movies include LA Confidential, The Insider, and Gladiator. And Ed Harris is always good in his movies. Jennifer Connelly? Well, she got big boobs. Also, she has many scenes in Requiem for a Dream where she’s without her panties.
A Beautiful Mind is an adaptation of Sylvia Nasar’s biography about John Forbes Nash, Jr.(played by Russell Crowe), a gifted mathematician who enrolls at Princeton during the height of the Cold War and Princeton’s graduate school prestige, led by Albert Einstein. At Princeton, John does nothing all day except write formulae on the wall, in the library, and on windows. If your IQ is not 180, you are a vandal. However, if you are a genius like Nash, it’s called eccentric.
His life takes on an odd turn when he is called to the Pentagon to help break codes for the government in its efforts against the Soviet Union. William Parcher (Harris) asks him to resume breaking codes for the government while Nash is busy pursuing chicks at MIT. Nash meets Alicia (Connelly) and falls in love, gets married, and lives happily ever after for a good ten minutes of the film.
During the middle of the movie, Nash is being chased by Soviet agents, government spies, and psychiatrists. Nash, it turns out, has schizophrenia. A part of him is this rugged dude who played Maximus is a total dude flick. And the other part of him is this eunuch who played John Nash. And after movie after movie, he loses his sense of self. So we, along with John Nash, must figure out what is the true world versus a world that he sees. His world is filled with abstract numbers, paranoid agents, and Jennifer Connelly.
Russell Crowe is a great actor. Perhaps someone else could have played this character equally well but he was brilliant. It would not surprise me if he wins his second consecutive Oscar for this truly moving portrayal of a nutcase. And Jennifer Connelly has such penetrating eyes. Ron Howard did a fine job of directing. The key grips and the caterers did excellent jobs as well. Not to sound like a wuss, but the last five minutes of the movie were beautifully told and I felt moisture around my eyes…errrr, the humidity of the theater caused odd condensation points. See the movie, enjoy the movie, and cry your eyes out. If you want to see Jennifer Connelly naked, rent Requiem for a Dream.
