STARS : Russell Crowe, Jennifer Connolly, Christopher Plummer, Paul Bettany, Adam Goldberg and Ed Harris.

A Beautiful Mind is remembered for many things, some good and some not so. These include “The movie that Russell Crowe didn’t win an Academy Award for”, “Winning Ron Howard’s first Best Picture Oscar” and most importantly “being a damn good film!”

This film is based on the life of Nobel Prize winning mathematician John Nash who suffers from Schizophrenia. His brilliant world consists of numbers and he can see structure where everyone else sees chaos and yet he struggles to fit in with what we term “Civilised Society”.

We start in Nash’s youth as he attended the prestigious Princeton University, from the outset we are able to see an example of this man’s brilliant mind, but also the beginnings of such a debilitating illness. We see his life through his eyes and slowly, the line between reality and fantasy become blurred.

Nash is played convincingly by Russell Crowe who never fails to amaze with the incredible acting skills and his ability to play an amazing array or characters and yet get you believing in every one of them.

The supporting cast are wonderful with the standout being Jennifer Connolly as his wife Alicia who won an Academy Award as best supporting actress. Other members of the cast including Ed Harris, Adam Goldberg (Saving Private Ryan) and Paul Bettany (A Knight’s Tale) are also excellent even if somewhat underused.

There is a couple more things I’d like to mention.

1) Even though Ron Howard mentions in the commentary that they couldn’t explore more aspects of Nash’s life it’s disappointing that they weren’t at least alluded to such as his homosexual tendencies and narcissistic temper.

2) I was also surprised by the fact the film was set further back than I thought with most events taking place in the mid 1950’s. Given that John Nash is still alive and kicking this makes him in his early 70’s if my calculations are correct.

3) Finally onto the dreaded politics for a brief moment and the question that simply has to be asked “Was Russell ripped off with Denzel winning the Best Actor Oscar?”. After comparing A Beautiful Mind with Training Day I’d have to say that the answer is a resounding YES. At least the film, director and Connolly all won much deserved little statuettes even if Russ didn’t.

Watch It If You Enjoyed : Good Will Hunting.

Verdict : Uplifting. Watch this film and then watch it again to see what you missed the first time around.

THE EXTRAS

* Audio Commentary 1 : Director Ron Howard shares his thoughts about the film, the cast, the crew and whatever else takes his fancy at the time. Howard provides highly informative information about his directorial choices as well as just how many of his own family and friends are scattered throughout although his dad was given the big heave ho and only makes the deleted scenes.

* Audio Commentary 2 : Screenwriter Akiva Goldsman provides an insightful commentary about the film and mainly talks specifically about the scene on screen as opposed to Howard who talks about whatever catches his mind at the time. It’s not as entertaining but I found it to be more informative overall.

* Deleted Scenes (27 minutes) : You can view these scenes with or without Ron Howard’s commentary but are best with listening to the director’s thoughts. There are 19 scenes in total which could have been left in quite easily such is their quality although the film footage itself is quite ordinary.

* Cast and Crew Filmographies : There are quite a few choices here but all contain the same format. Some text pages detailing the person’s film history and then their filmography.

* Production Notes : Some useful information is supplied here but it’s mostly just the same old yada yada yada

CONCLUSION

One thing I have to admit is that Ron Howard makes excellent films. Whilst some of the topic matter has not appealed to me personally they are always intelligent, well put together and perfectly cast, and this film is no exception.

With thanks to Universal, A Beautiful Mind is available to rent from August 28