“A Beautiful Mind” is an interesting and rather disturbing movie from director Ron Howard (“Rush”). I did not really care for some of the early scenes but as the film progresses, it all starts to make sense. There are some very powerful moments in this biography movie about a troubled mathematician.

John Nash (Russell Crowe “Gladiator”, “Virtuosity”) may lack basic social skills but he is a magnificent mathematician. At Princeton, he helps revolutionise economic theories with his ‘game theory’. A few years later, he accepts a cryptography job from a shadowy government agent (Ed Harris “The Abyss”, “The Rock”). He becomes increasingly paranoid and his wife (Jennifer Connelly “Hulk”) struggles to come to terms with what is truly happening to him.

Russell Crowe does a really good job playing John Nash. However, it’s Jennifer Connelly that steals the show as Alicia Nash. I really loved her performance here as she portrays a dedicated wife that is suffering tremendously due to her husband’s behaviour. Ed Harris is okay as Parcher. Paul Bettany (“A Knight’s Tale”) plays Charles, Nash’s roommate at Princeton and the character provides a real contrast from Crowe’s. Christopher Plummer (“Dragnet”) and Judd Hirsch (“Independence Day”) also have roles here.

I was initially frustrated while watching “A Beautiful Mind” because it seemed to think it was really intelligent yet it glossed over a lot of the maths. I really wanted to understand some of the elaborate equations I was seeing but the film never really explained them. The movie changes and you begin to see the great writing come into effect. By the end, I was pretty darn amazed by this film. It’s never graphic but psychologically, it’s one of the most disturbing films out there. I highly recommend it for people that like mind-bending movies such as “Unbreakable”, “Naked Lunch”, “The Prestige” and “The Machinist”.