Simply put, a biopic about John Forbes Nash Jr., a mathematical genius who went on to win a Nobel Prize after years battling his many problems, including his schizophrenia.

'A Beautiful Mind' is good, that much I'm not questioning. It is very engrossing, at times moving more like a thriller than a drama; likewise, the emotion actually feels natural and effective, without the usual sappiness of Hollywood dramas. The acting is superb: Russell Crowe and Jennifer Connelly shine here, and deserved the awards that year. Others who shone in a very good cast included Ed Harris, Christopher Plummer and Paul Bettany.

My complaint comes in that this is supposed to be a biography of John Nash; however, it is anything but. This is Hollywood sugar-coating at its finest: it shows Nash as a troubled individual, having to fight against his illness and overcome his own shy nature to succeed; it completes ignores his more thornier history and changes it all to make him an impossibly sympathetic person.

They flat out make things up as they go for the sake of turning this into your typical 'underdog fighting against all odds', formulaic and not unlike 'Rocky' or 'Good Will Hunting' (those other two, though, do not attempt to disguise themselves under the cover of a true story).

This is partially fault of Nash himself, who refused to let a biopic of him unless they took out all the 'shadier' aspects of his life, and partially of screenwriter Akiva Goldsman, who extensively makes use of emotion over actual storytelling to win over his audiences in pretty much every film he does (I know what to expect when I see his name on a film, and it is never to expect a great one).

In the end 'A Beautiful Mind' is a very good film, with a great cast, and a rare one which manages to make its emotional moments effective without melodrama or cheesiness; even the more cheesy moments, like Nash's 'Nobel Prize speech' (yet another non-truth), work better here than they usually. On the other hand, being labeled as a 'true story' or as a biopic is not only misleading, but distracting for those who know Nash's real (and far more interesting) story.

I never understood Hollywood when it comes to their sugarcoated biopics. If they are going to change and make things up so his lifestory can support the theme they want to, why still insist with the 'true story' label? Just to fool the viewers/critics?