A Beautiful Mind (2001) Universal Pictures/DreamWorks Pictures/Imagine Entertainment 📢 Director: Ron Howard 💰 Producer: Brian Grazer, Ron Howard 👫 Cast: Russell Crowe, Ed Harris, Jennifer Connelly, Paul Bettany, Adam Goldberg, Judd Hirsch, Josh Lucas, Anthony Rapp, Christopher Plummer. 🏆 Awards ceremony: -74th Academy Awards: March 24, 2002. Kodak Theatre, Hollywood, Los Angeles, California. 🎭 Other films nominated for Best Picture this year: -Gosford Park. -In The Bedroom. -The Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring. -Moulin Rouge! 📕 Plot summary: Beginning in 1947, Professor John Nash (RUSSELL CROWE) is considered to be a natural codebreaker/mathematician who is enlisted by the US government to decipher some Russian code. He is then later accused of being a military spy and then committed to a psychiatric hospital. He begins to question his own sanity when others do not see what he sees. 💥 Standout scene(s): Alicia tries to telephone the doctor when John begins acting strangely. Parcher (ED HARRIS) warns John to stop Alicia from making the call otherwise he will have to shoot her. We see the perspectives of both Alicia and John and what is and isn't real. 🔑 Facts: -The 74th Academy Awards. -Nominated for 8 Academy Awards, it won 4: Best Picture, Director, Actor (Russell Crowe), Supporting Actress (Jennifer Connelly). -Second successive Best Picture appearance for Russell Crowe (Gladiator). -Second Best Picture appearance for Judd Hirsch (Ordinary People). 🙂 Personal opinion: This was one of those films that was on my watch list for a few years and I finally had the excuse to get around to watching it for this project. My first impressions of it were not positive, I'm afraid. The first 20 minutes felt like a re-envisioned version of GOOD WILL HUNTING and by the 30-minutes mark I was already starting to lose interest. The story takes an extraordinarily long time to get to where it is going and by the time it gets there I was already well tired of it. The first half of the film is really slow and drags along with so many unnecessary scenes that just extend the overall running time of something that didn't need to be that long. So much bollocks in the middle which could have been cut out. There is no point in providing the viewer with a stunning finale if what you have fed them up until that point was mundane and mediocre. The final third really picks up and becomes exciting but by then it was already too late for me. A huge disappointment. Jennifer Connelly does look nice and Russell Crowe has his exploding moments of acting competence but it's debatable to me whether he deserved a second Oscar for this one. To be fair, I think this is one of those films I really need to see again to appreciate it - or even understand half of what was going on?! Did it deserve the Oscar? ❌NO. Sorry, but there is no way that this film deserved the Oscar over The Lord Of The Rings. 5/10

Review date: 17 May 2025