Main cast: Russell Crowe (John Nash), Ed Harris (Parcher), Jennifer Connelly (Alicia Nash), Christopher Plummer (Dr. Rosen), Paul Bettany (Charles), Adam Goldberg (Sol), Josh Lucas (Hansen), Vivien Cardone (Marcee), Anthony Rapp (Bender), Jason Gray-Stanford (Ainsley), Judd Hirsch (Helinger), Austin Pendleton (Thomas King), Victor Steinbach (Professor Horner), Tanya Clarke (Becky), and Thomas F Walsh (Captain)
Director: Ron Howard
Dumb movie.
Now, wait, that is not a slur on the hero, real life dude schizophrenic John Nash who did a lot of Great Things, as this movie will tell you. But I’m saying that this movie is dumb. It’s not content with telling me a man’s story – it pushes me over the edge by morphing into a horrendously saccharine “Love is everything! Love will save the day! All you need is love! LOOOOOOVVVEEEEE!” Moulin Rouge-wannabe.
John Nash is a mathematician who won the 1994 Nobel Prize for economics. He’s a genius. He’s crazy. Well, he’s probably human too, although this movie wouldn’t give me any hint. This is his story. Geek gets pretty chick. Geek suffers for his Genius. Geek gets incarcerated in madhouses but he stands up for the name of his genius. Meanwhile wifey weeps and says crock like love will be all the panacea they need, love will save the day, she loves him, he loves her, they are one big crock family.
This movie even puts in gratuitous car chases and spooky espionage scenes, capitalizing on Nash’s belief that aliens from UFO are sending him coded messages to turn Nash into a James Bond dude minus the promiscuity. This movie substitutes character development for Russell Crowe’s increasingly disheveled appearance, as if by getting more unkempt, Nash is becoming a more rounded character.
In fact, this movie just stops of making John Nash the Jesus Christ of the Millennium. Maybe they would have, if Hollywood isn’t so chicken-hearted. They take a story of a man’s life, smooths over the dirty parts, puts in car chases, gun power, and lots of hokey and trite sentiments about love, and we give Russell Crowe an Oscar nomination. Guess all you need to bowl over the old fools at the Academy is to play a nutcase with an accent.
