Beautiful Mind, A

Time Richard Schickel

The result is mainstream moviemaking at its highest, most satisfying level.

San Francisco Chronicle Edward Guthmann

Inspiring and largely unsentimental, this is as much a love story as a tale of courage.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Crowe brings the character to life by sidestepping sensationalism and building with small behavioral details.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

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.

New Times (L.A.) Robert Wilonsky

It's everything most movies this year have not been: deeply felt, genuine, gracious.

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

So 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.

New York Post Jonathan Foreman

Gripping, 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.

Boston Globe Jay Carr

The 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.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

Though 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.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

The kind of expression of emotion that touches a deeper chord.

USA Today Mike Clark

This 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.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

Howard 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.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

It'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.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

Crowe 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.

Slate David Edelstein

As 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.

Variety Todd McCarthy

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.

The New Yorker Anthony Lane

Crowe astounds with his technical skill. [7 Jan 2002, p. 82]

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

A 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.

Chicago Reader Lisa Alspector

Director Ron Howard's deftness in suggesting the subjective experience of Crowe's character, who's later diagnosed with schizophrenia, makes for inspirational narrative.

New York Daily News Jami Bernard

This is another brilliant performance by Crowe, who is to body language what Meryl Streep is to accents.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

What 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.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

Howard, 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.

Village Voice Dennis Lim

It'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.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

There 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.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

The 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.

LA Weekly John Powers

While 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.

The New York Times Dana Stevens

The movie can -- indeed, should -- be intellectually rejected, but you can't quite banish it from your mind.

Portland Oregonian Kim Morgan

Crowe 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.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

Instead 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.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

While it's a splendidly acted film, A Beautiful Mind is also a wasted opportunity.

Newsweek David Ansen

Too 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.

Film Threat Ron Wells

Aside from all the known material on public record the filmmakers chose not to use, Howard isn't even capable of believably bringing this off.

Salon.com Charles Taylor

It'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.