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Overall Rating
  Awesome: 60.19%
Worth A Look: 17.96%
Average: 10.19%
Pretty Bad: 4.37%
Total Crap: 7.28%
5 reviews, 176 user ratings
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| Good Will Hunting |
by Filmink Magazine (owes us money)
"What makes it enthralling are the characters that populate it."

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A young man, seemingly no different to anyone else, works at one of America's most prestigious universities as a janitor. When the halls are empty he takes it upon himself to solve mind-blowing mathematical formulas left on the corridor blackboard by a lecturer for the cerebral torture of his students.This young Einstein is Will Hunting, an Irish-American from Boston, bent on either self-destruction or celebrity status amongst elite intellectuals - whichever comes first. Will (Damon, last seen in The Rainmaker) has an 'attitood' problem, which eventually leads to his arrest and imminent incarceration.
Enter Professor Lambeau (Skarsgard, from Breaking the Waves) who offers to become his guardian on the condition that Will meet with him to solve the mathematical puzzles of the universe, and see a therapist once a week. After a comic interlude that sees a parade of potential therapists exasperated by Will's impenetrable resistance, Lambeau has no recourse but to turn to an old college room-mate, Sean (Williams).
Sean seems Lambeau's opposite in every way - less brilliant, less ambitious and certainly less arrogant and, for a while at least, unable to reach far enough into Will's psyche to get anything but chilling retorts that often shake him to his very core. This is the catalyst for the unfolding of a heart-warming relationship that requires both men to acknowledge their pain to the other before any healing can take place.
On this film's surface, the story of an unlikely genius is something we have seen before, but what makes Good Will Hunting so enthralling are the characters that populate it. Written by Damon and his friend Affleck (who plays one of his pals), this film has all the marks of heavy workshopping in order to find the truth of the characters - they are very real and very flawed, which is something Hollywood has a lot of problems creating convincingly. True, the psychology is a little dodgy, but the strength of the drama more than makes up for it.
Damon plays Will with just the right mix of youthful pretension and genuine fear of what the big wide world might have in store. His ability to wring out emotion from his character without falling into sentimentality is also a tribute to Van Sant, who is in familiar territory when it comes to youthful disorientation. This is particularly evident when Damon shares the screen with Driver, who sparkles in her role as the English Harvard student.And, while Williams seems to be re-prising a fusion between
Dead Poets Society and Awakenings, he reminds us here that, given the chance, he can be a formidable presence in a dramatic role. ---Paul Garcia
del.icio.us
link directly to this review at http://efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=94&reviewer=14 originally posted: 08/26/98 12:23:34
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USA 05-Dec-1997 (R) DVD: 04-Mar-2003
UK N/A
Australia 02-Feb-1998 (MA)
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