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Amazon.com essential video Robin Williams won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, and actors Matt Damon and Ben Affleck nabbed one for Best Original Screenplay, but the feel-good hit Good Will Hunting triumphs because of its gifted director, Gus Van Sant. The unconventional director (My Own Private Idaho, Drugstore Cowboy) saves a script marred by vanity and clunky character development by yanking soulful, touching performances out of his entire cast (amazingly, even one by Williams that's relatively schtick-free). Van Sant pulls off the equivalent of what George Cukor accomplished for women's melodrama in the '30s and '40s: He's crafted an intelligent, unabashedly emotional male weepie about men trying to find inner-wisdom.
Matt Damon stars as Will Hunting, a closet math genius who ignores his gift in favor of nightly boozing and fighting with South Boston buddies (co-writer Ben Affleck among them). While working as a university janitor, he solves an impossible calculus problem scribbled on a hallway blackboard and reluctantly becomes the prodigy of an arrogant MIT professor (Stellan Skarsgard). Damon only avoids prison by agreeing to see psychiatrists, all of whom he mocks or psychologically destroys until he meets his match in the professor's former childhood friend, played by Williams. Both doctor and patient are haunted by the past, and as mutual respect develops, the healing process begins. The film's beauty lies not with grand climaxes, but with small, quiet moments. Scenes such as Affleck's clumsy pep talk to Damon while they drink beer after work, or any number of therapy session between Williams and Damon offer poignant looks at the awkward ways men show affection and feeling for one another. --Dave McCoy
Product Description Matt damon is will hunting a working class kid with a genius iq who cant muster a passing score in his personal life. Unable to talk his way out of a pending jail sentence wills only hope is professor and therapist sean mcguire the one man who can change his life will has called the shots now hes met his match. Studio: Buena Vista Home Video Release Date: 06/06/2006 Starring: Matt Damon Minnie Driver Run time: 126 minutes Rating: R Director: Gus Van Sant
One of the best films of the '90sDecember 3, 2008 Matt Damon and Ben Affleck won an Oscar for Best Screenplay, and Robin Williams won another for Best Supporting Actor, for "Good Will Hunting," and if you watch this film, it's really not hard to see why.
Damon plays Will Hunting, a gifted but troubled young man who's worked many a low-wage job and been in one too many scrapes with the Boston Police. Affleck plays his best friend, Chuck, an average working joe who, along with two other friends, accompanies Will in all his (mis)adventures in life. Their Boston accents are absolutely flawless in this film. Will, working as a janitor at MIT, spots an incredibly difficult problem on a blackboard outside one of the lecture halls and solves it inside of a minute without breaking a sweat--he's a genius, possibly a super-genius, and we see him able to match wits even with arrogant Harvard students (as in one very amusing scene in a Cambridge bar/Harvard hangout spot) quite easily. He is spotted by Professor Gerald Lambeau (Stelland Skaarsgard), who agrees to bail Will out of jail after his most recent scrape with the law if he'll 1) work with the professor on solving some very difficult math problems and 2) see a psychiatrist to work out his problems.
Will, who grew up an orphan in and out of various foster homes, often being horribly abused, has developed a tough outer shell that makes him push everyone away who tries to get too close--he tears down each of the professor's suggested shrinks until Lambeau matches him up with Sean Kelly (Robin Williams, in the best piece of acting he's ever done), who turns out to be, in many ways, Will's soul-brother (another Southie native who had a hard childhood). He even keeps Schuyler (Minnie Driver), his girlfriend, at a distance with a tall tale about his 12 Irish Catholic brothers, even though it's clear he's quite fond of her, and she's in love with him.
The story that unfolds, while it may be somewhat cliche, is also one we can all easily recognise, having some element of our lives--the climactic scene, in which Sean finally breaks through to Will by gently reminding him that all the trouble that's befallen him in his life is not his fault never fails to get me choked up and teary-eyed. Will's story is that of a misunderstood soul trying to get through life the only way he knows how--the hard way. It takes a kindred spirit to get him to see that it doesn't have to be like that, and that he can do much better for himself. Even his blue-collar friends, none of whom has more than middling prospects in life, know he's special and want to see him succeed.
It's a great movie, and if you have a soft spot for Boston, you'll have another reason to enjoy this gem. Definitely recommended.
What makes films great!November 2, 2008 Character development at it's best. Written and on the screen. It draws audiences to see it and big name talent to be in it.
Good will hunting by BrandonOctober 2, 2008 I don't have to say how good this movie was. I could watch it all the time and never get tired of it.
Inspirational and Entertaining DramaAugust 18, 2008 After all these years, it's still hard to believe that Ben Affleck and Matt Damon wrote this screenplay. The Collector's Series edition has a commentary with Ben and Matt, where they talk about the genesis of the movie and how the screenplay changed from its inception to the final film cut. Every actor involved turns in brilliant performances--the casting of Robin Williams and Minnie Driver can't be overstated. "Good Will Hunting" is one inspirational drama that isn't sappy or ridiculously overwrought.
Einstein, Shakespeare--and Who???July 25, 2008 7 out of 8 found this review helpful
Will Hunting (Matt Damon) is an MIT janitor and mathematical genius with a major attachment and abuse reactive disorders (though the film doesn't identify the latter). After solving an "impossible" math problem Professor Gerald Lambeau (Stellan Skarsgard) chalked on the board outside his classroom, the goodly pedant attends Hunting's latest arraignment for fighting, and convinces a skeptical judge that he can salvage the boy's otherwise futile life.
After false starts with several "master" psychologists whom Hunting easily outwits, Lambeau approaches Sean McGuire (Robin Williams). Lambeau figures, who better to help the boy than his eclectic former college roommate, like Hunting a tough-skinned "Southie" (South Boston native)?
Thus begins Hunting's frequent forays into Cambridge to "study" with Lambeau and his mathematical colleagues, whom he usually humiliates by solving their toughest problems in the blink of an eye.
In one clever scene, Hunting takes his best friend Chuckie (Ben Affleck) and two other Southie sidekicks to a Cambridge bar. Chuckie tries to impress Harvard student Skylar (Minnie Driver). A self-satisfied graduate student prig interrupts, and tries embarrassing Chuck to captivate Skylar. That backfires when Hunting steps in. He has also apparently read and memorized every book ever written. The prig slinks away in shame. As Hunting and friends depart, Skylar approaches and hands him her number.
As another reviewer notes, Good Will Hunting is good and original--but where good, is not original and where original, is not good. I'd agree that the film nicely portrays lower class Boston Irish life, and the strange match between a high class orphan (and upper-class) Harvard woman and a brilliant street tough, whose early life was marred by constant physical abuse. The acting in general is very strong, with Robin Williams (as always) at the head of the class.
But the Matt Damon and Ben Affleck screenplay, while often fine and riveting, is also at times completely naive. As young actors before this film gave them their first break, Damon and Affleck bought into ahistorical propaganda and never let go. Thus in one session with McGuire, Hunting again spews forth his mastery of great literature and science, but like an otherwise unread cultist ranks Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky with Shakespeare. Utterly ballsy---and too stupid.
If the math is inaccurate, so what. That's not a key point of this film.
But it is extremely unfortunate that the movie portrays a sudden breakthrough when Hunting finally gets down to talking to McGuire about the serial beatings he suffered as a child. Everyone even slightly familiar with psychological therapy knows this is genuinely incredible (as in not believable). Genius or not, no patient who experienced such major early life traumas could achieve such complete healing after only a few months of counseling. This might make pleasant fiction. But given the seriousness of the film's central theme, it dangerously suggests the impossible is possible and could give some viewers false hope.
--Alyssa A. Lappen
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