Don't listen to the negative reviews

Charming and brutal

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

The Man Who Knew Infinity - Although the scientist-as-superhero film genre is more than well-established by now through A Beautiful Mind, The Imitation Game and The Theory of Everything, This biopic of Srinivasa Ramanujan warrants a watch for the pure genius the leading man epitomized. A Fellow of the Royal Society and also Fellow of Trinity College - monumental attainments for an Indian with no formal training in mathematics - tips of the iceberg for the genius that Srinivasa Ramanujan was, the movie tries to capture his liaison with renowned mathematician G.H.Hardy and his life at the Cambridge university.The movie scores in its accurate rendering of the intellectual mathematics involved and the realities of academic antagonism; the historical and cultural skirmishes between Indian and English conducts and the side track of jingoists vs. pacifists. A Tamil movie with the same topic - Ramanujan was released one year earlier which dispensed more with the personal life and enlargement of the virtuoso.Having said that, Dev Patel was an out-and-out miscast for the role, given Ramanujan's short and stout physique and his Dravidian guises. Patel is sure a strange casting choice yet captures his appeal with integrity and passion and in some means, a heftier underdog akin to his breakout role in Slumdog Millionaire.Biopics in our country have apportioned mostly with sportsmen (Bhaag Milkha Bhaag, M.S.Dhoni, Mary Kom, Dangal, Paan Singh Tomar, Azhar) while undermining the scientists and intellectuals - it's a pity that we are still relishing on screen versions of delinquents like Gujarati Bootlegger Abdul Latif (Read Raees !) while the west is adapting our finer lives to silver screen !

5/12/18. Saw this in the theater. An excellently made movie about the legendary Ramunajan, a dirt-poor brilliant math genius who just happened to have been lucky enough to be discovered and then tutored by a renown British academic, G.H. Hardy. This movie shows just how precarious genius is in a world where wealth and class (in colonial India), and how Ramunajan's contributions to mathematics could well have been lost to obscurity. Worth catching.

I found this movie by accident at my local library and cannot believe the good fortune to have been introduced to such an outstanding role model for humanity. As a fan of Dev Patel from Slumdog and other works, this role was every bit as good, and Jeremy Irons played the role of Hardy to perfection; he even looks a good bit like the real professor back then. The courage of a young man to travel to a distant land because of his belief in the equations and formulas that just appeared in his head, the relationships between he and the professor, the portrayal of the typical discrimination of outsiders and Indians from Britain, and the beauty of the Trinity campus as well as the love between a man and wife who shared little time together, everyone will enjoy this movie if they just see it through, as Ramanujen did.

I've enjoyed Dev Patel in a number of films (especially "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel") and in cable's "The Newsroom". I thought he had potential. But with this film -- which is about a topic I hate -- mathematics -- I thought the old saying (slightly paraphrased) was appropriate: Instead of "Today you are a man", "Today you are an actor." To me, there is one problem with this film. It's difficult to relate to the story since the average film-goer doesn't have the slightest idea what these mathematicians are doing. I'm quite well educated...but what they're going means nothing to me.And so, most of us can only relate to half the film -- the human story. And that is something that most of us can relate to. Prejudice. Family intrigue. How to accept another human being. Giftedness. And other human themes. And it is here that both Dev Patel and Jeremy Irons shine. And, I also have to give a nod to a British actor that I usually care for (perhaps because of the parts I've seen him in) -- Toby Jones -- whom I found quite endearing here. Devika Bhise, as Patel's wife, is also very good. The other actors...mostly British...do their jobs well, but don't really stand out.But while I consider this a sort of break-out movie for Dev Patel, I want to focus for a moment on Jeremy Irons. I look at "actors" like (well, I'll pick on Tom Cruise here as one example) Tom Cruise, and I know that when it comes to the craft of acting, they can't hold a candle to someone like Jeremy Irons. He was never a matinée "star" in the normal sense of the word, but throughout his career he has demonstrated an understanding of the real craft of acting...and he does it again here.If you are a serious movie-goer, even if (like me) you're not into mathematics, I recommend this film.