A Beautiful Mind

When the movement of the mind combines with amazing drama, I am moved, smiling, and feel a sense of perfect complexity. Although the duration flying over two hours slightly blurs the final impressions, Clean Soul has become surprisingly timeless matter which returns forever alive and pulsating when listening to Horner's soundtrack. (01/14/2006)

A riveting film in the truest sense of the word. Riveting not only in its action (the car chase, the chase on the university campus), but especially in the portrayal itself – the scene where Adam Smith is doubted and revised is absolutely perfect and shows Ron Howard's creative potential at its best (even though I had some doubts about him up to this point). Russell Crowe's performance is a separate chapter of this film. His character perfectly presents a "state of mind" that is pure genius, but at the same time terribly dangerous. As in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, for example, the viewer watches a large part of the main character's life and experiences his complex transformation onscreen (although in this case, of course, the transformation is very specific). The episodic nature of the whole film is also well handled, each individual "episode" of the main character's life perfectly maps one or another part of his life and together creates a fantastic, emotionally charged work. And yes, jam-packed would be an understatement in this case :)) (12/28/2011)

What would A Beautiful Mind be without the phenomenal Russel Crowe? I guess that's like asking what Rain Man would look like without Dustin Hoffman or Silence of the Lambs without Anthony Hopkins... But I think that in this Hollywood amateurish biopic Crowe's performance is so crucial that without it the whole film and its smart screenplay wouldn’t be even half as good. A Beautiful Mind is a sophisticated and effective but very unpretentious film equation without any unknowns or variables, where professor Howard patiently explains in his two-hour lesson how you can skilfully achieve a remarkable result without having to think or give vent to even the most intimate emotions... And needless to say, most people will calculate to the value of RC - Russell Crowe. :) Maybe to the power of two. 85% (10/07/2011)

What can I say. I simply do not like Russell Crowe and I avoid movies with him. But when you are at your girlfriend's parents' house, you can't choose the movies. And it happened to be "A Beautiful Mind". Hoping that Crowe and Ridley Scott did not collaborate on this one, as their combination is truly deadly for me, I hoped that the movie wouldn't be so bad. And it wasn't. Even though I have seen many movies lately where everything is a little different, this film simply got to me. Crowe is incredible and I can't understand how he could have won an Oscar for "Gladiator" but not for this. I can really recommend this film to anyone interested in game theory and decision making. It is presented in a way that everyone can understand and it is also an acting masterpiece. Until the end, the viewer who is unfamiliar with Nash's life is not sure what is actually going on with him. My opinion of Crowe hasn't changed, but he convinced me at least that he can act. More: http://www.filmovy-denik.cz/2012/03/diar-milovnika-filmu-c-0001-cista-duse.html (02/13/2013)

This film is held up by Russel Crowe’s performance, without which it would be just a slightly above-par drama like countless others. A Beautiful Mind is certainly worth watching; thanks to the fairly interesting plot, those two hours and something go by quite fast, but I seriously doubt it will make enough of an impression on anyone to remember and admire it over time. To achieve that, it’s missing either a stronger ending (in this sense, I think the best moment is somewhere around the middle, when the viewer gets to know you know what, while the last half hour sort of fades away), or a more distinctive direction – Ron Howard is a good craftsman, but nothing more than that. 7/10 (09/09/2008)