We have moved up 1% and we are now in the 80’s for the percentage scores and for me I am closing in on being half way through this section of 50 movies and with 3 animated movies to come I am here reviewing a beautiful film which like so many others is melocholy to say the least. If a movie is not on the scoreboard for the Tri-Critic Sync Challenge then I will not longer mention it but do an update at the end of my sections (i.e. every 50 movies). Released in 2001 and made with a budget of $58m and went on to make $313m at the box office and was seen as a huge success and this was echoed with critics. The two I use as a benchmark gave this movie a 8.2/10 from IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes with a lower 74%. This movie went on to win a hat full of awards and was received well whether you speak to anyone that has seen it. Starring Russell Crowe, Ed Harris, Jennifer Connelly, Paul Bettany, Adam Goldberg, Judd Hirsch, Josh Lucas, Anthony Rapp and Christopher Plummer. Directed by the great Ron Howard and based on a book by Sylvia Nasar which was a biographical story of the life of American mathematician John Nash a Nobel Laureate in Economics and Abel Prize winner.
The story begins when John Nash was a co-recipient of the prestigious Carnegue Scholaship for mathematics at Princeton University in 1947. There he meets fellow maths and science graduate students, Sol, Ainsley and Bender and his roommate Charles Herman. He works out new concept for governing dynamics and he publishes an article on his theory earning him an appointment at MIT where Sol & Bender join him. By 1953 he is invited to the Pentagon to crack encrypted enemy telecoms which he does with just his mind. He later gets bored with MIT work which includes teaching and he is recruited by William Parcher who is with the Defence Dept who assigns him a top secret mission looking for secret patterns in magazines and newspapers that are assisting the Soviet Union and this will help conclude their plot. Nash becomings increasingly obsessed with this work and posts updates in a secret mailbox and then believes he may have been followed. One of his students asks him to dinner and they fall in love. He meets back up with his room mate who encourages him to propose marriage which he does and Alicia accepts. Fearing for his life after surviving a shootout between Parcher and the Soviet Agents and then learning that Alicia is pregnant he decides to give up with the whole spy business. Parcher on the other hand has other ideas and blackmails him to continue working on his assignment. While delivering a lecture at Harvard University he believes some in attendance are Russian Agents and flees from Dr Rosen but is caught and sedated. He is committed to a psychiatric facility. The movie here takes a turn which if you haven’t seen the movie I will not ruin for you.
The title is perfect with a beautiful movie as the end is beautiful too. What this man had to over come to achieve what he did is amazing and full credit should be paid to him. Ron Howard again works wonders for a movie, there are many great works of Howard out there and you should check them out. For this movie, it won four Oscars and was nominated for others as well and there is a good reason for this as it is one of those good movies that will slowly drag you into a story that seems quite dull to begin with and then you go. Huh? What the? You then have to take stock and rethink everything you thought this movie was and mid film hit the reset button and enjoy a different story and a recovery of one man’s fight to win a Nobel prize. All good.
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