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100Crowe brings the character to life by sidestepping sensationalism and building with small behavioral details.
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100Inspiring and largely unsentimental, this is as much a love story as a tale of courage.
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100The result is mainstream moviemaking at its highest, most satisfying level.
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90Sadly, 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.
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90It's everything most movies this year have not been: deeply felt, genuine, gracious.
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89So many things come together so beautifully in this movie based on the life of John Forbes Nash Jr. that you're likely to find yourself willing to benignly overlook its occasional biographical lapses and narrative sweetening.
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88Though the role might seem a real stretch for an actor who just won an Oscar for his Charlton Heston turn as Maximus in "Gladiator," he and the movie ace the test.
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88Gripping, smart and moving, without falling prey to sentimentality, it shows what can be achieved when mainstream filmmakers like Howard and Goldsman are genuinely inspired and determined to be honest.
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88This is one inspiring movie despite extremely tricky subject matter -- better than "Shine" and among the most affecting ever made about co-existing with mental demons.
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88The film makes more apparent than ever that Howard is quite underrated as a filmmaker, possibly because he's been hidden in full view in the mainstream for so long.
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88The kind of expression of emotion that touches a deeper chord.
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88Howard has never been so grown-up in his handling of tough themes or so inventive in depicting states of mind. Goldsman has never been so down-to-earth or created so touching a character.
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83Crowe sometimes summons up one of the most powerful depictions of mental illness I have ever seen with barely an eyelid flicker separating manifestations of sickness from utterly sane displays of creative concentration.
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83It's an absorbing, progressively unsettling and ultimately very inspiring biographical reflection that, in the interest of creating its subject's internal landscape, plays some chilling tricks on its audience.
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80As Nash gets closer to Crowe's own age (and level of dissipation), the performance settles down and becomes first credible and then overwhelming. This is a stupendous piece of acting.
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80Consistently 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.
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80A greatly ambitious undertaking, but from the commercial point of view quite insane. The movie is ridiculously fragile: It's like a Faberge egg, and even a twitch of foreknowledge will destroy the magic of the movie utterly.
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Crowe astounds with his technical skill. [7 Jan 2002, p. 82]
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80Director Ron Howard's deftness in suggesting the subjective experience of Crowe's character, who's later diagnosed with schizophrenia, makes for inspirational narrative.
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75This is another brilliant performance by Crowe, who is to body language what Meryl Streep is to accents.
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75What began as a bold and thrilling story descends into Hollywood cliché. But Crowe and Connelly's work rises above the mush. They make A Beautiful Mind go.
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70Howard, and the screenwriter, Akiva Goldsman, have used the book as nothing more than their jumping-off point for an erratic work of fiction that's part mystery thriller and part Hollywood schmaltz.
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60The success of this effect, which helps elevate the movie above a classy disease-of-the-week saga, rests firmly on Russell Crowe's performance, and it's a strikingly good and moving one.
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60While I don't doubt that Howard's done the best he can, it's sad to see a beautiful mind whittled down by such a plain one.
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60It's doubly frustrating that after flirting with (and even upending) biopic conventions for much of its length, A Beautiful Mind finally gives in to them so readily.
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60There is more to admire in A Beautiful Mind than you might suspect, but less than its creators believe. When the film does succeed, it almost seems to do so despite itself.
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60The movie can -- indeed, should -- be intellectually rejected, but you can't quite banish it from your mind.
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50While it's a splendidly acted film, A Beautiful Mind is also a wasted opportunity.
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50Crowe understands what's interesting about Nash: He's not a feel-good figure. It's a pity the same can't be said for Howard.
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50Instead of an originally conceived movie that reflects Nash's troubled but brilliant mind, we have one of those formulaically rendered Important Subject movies -- the kind that seem exclusively designed for Best Picture nominations.
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40Too facile to resonate deeply. Shouldn't a movie celebrating Nash give you some idea what his mathematical work is about? Fishier still is the suggestion that the cure for paranoid schizophrenia is love.
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30Aside from all the known material on public record the filmmakers chose not to use, Howard isn't even capable of believably bringing this off.
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20It's not just our emotions that are being played on here, it's not just our intelligence being insulted because of Ron Howard and Akiva Goldsman's presumption that we won't have any interest in a character whom it's not always possible to like. It's John Nash's life, being turned into an Oscar machine and an easy way to jerk tears.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 57 out of 89
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Mixed: 9 out of 89
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Negative: 23 out of 89
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R.Lopez10
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GustavoH.R.8