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Starring Matt Damon, Robin Williams, Minnie Driver, Ben Affleck, Stellan Skarsgard, Casey Affleck,
Casey Hauser. Written by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. Directed by Gus Van Sant.
Will Hunting (Damon) is a young man working as a janitor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A renowned mathematician Lambeau (Skarsgard) leaves an unsolved matrix theorem he has assigned to his advanced mathematics class on the board, and Will, one night while working, puts the solution on the board. Lambeau and his class of whiz kids are baffled as to the identity of the scholar, but one night he finds Will answering another difficult math problem he left on the board, but Will takes off before Lambeau can discover his identity. At a local bar Will and his friends (Affleck, Affleck, Hauser) come across a down-to-earth pre-med student Skylar (Driver), and she takes a liking to the charming rogue, and they begin to date. Will currently finds himself in a wee bit of trouble. He laid a severe beating on an old childhood tormentor, and smacked a cop trying to wrestle him down. He has been charged with assault numerous times before, as well as other petty crimes, but has beaten the wrap most of the time acting as his own lawyer, citing obscure legal cases. But hitting the cop lands him in jail. To his surprise, Lambeau has tracked him down and gotten him out of jail, with two conditions - he works his mathematical magic for the professor, and he sees a shrink to curb his violent tendencies. Will goes through five therapists, until he meets one who was an old college roommate of the professor's, currently working at a small, local community college. Sean McGuire (Williams) came from the same Boston southside as Will, and eventually they form a degree of trust where Will can let go of his inability to let go and take a chance on being hurt, as he had been growing up. And Sean, who lost his wife after a protracted, painful bought with cancer, begins to break open the shell he's created around himself since his wife's death, and allows himself to move on with his life. Damon and Affleck are both Boston boys, who wrote the screenplay before they became the rising stars they currently are. The script is quite good, but a bit uneven. Certain sections contain witty and entertaining banter, such as the interplay between Driver and Damon, and Williams and Damon. There are also a couple of speeches, especially one by Damon explaining why he would turn down a lucrative job with a government agency because of its soulless activities, that are excellent. The film examines several themes - fear of rejection, loyalty, success, getting over loss, responsibility to use your God-given talents - quite well. But there are also parts that are not that successful, such as the miraculous breakthrough Will achieves with Sean, by just hearing the phrase "It's not your fault". And never-before-solved complex math theorems are not solved in 5 minutes, in about 10 lines, even by geniuses. The film is elevated primarily by the enthusiastic performances of its actors. Damon and Ben Affleck are solid, and quite believeable as tough Irish punks on the wrong side of the tracks. Both are originally from Boston, and wrote this very loosely based on their experiences growing up there. It is Damon's second star turn, the first being The Rainmaker, and both films show a wide range of ability to play both intelligence and strength, and he skillfully shows in this film a gradual softening of his character during his relationship with Skylar. Williams is exceptional, vividly showing the pain of Sean's loss of his wife, and understatedly showing his dedication and empathy for Will. Driver is, as usual, charming and down-to-earth, and provides excellent chemistry with Damon. Good Will Hunting is a feel-good movie, but better than that description usually implies.   |