# Good Will Hunting (1997)

### reviewed by
Kevin Patterson

    Film Review by Kevin Patterson

    Good Will Hunting
    Rating: ***1/2 (out of four)
    R, 1997
    Directed by Gus Van Sant. Written by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck.
    Starring Matt Damon, Robin Williams, Ben Affleck.

I must admit that I was a tad skeptical of "Good Will Hunting", based both on the previews and the first fifteen minutes of the film, in which the main character Will Hunting (Matt Damon), an MIT janitor in his early twenties, is discovered to be an Einstein-level closet genius when he solves two extraordinarily difficult math problems overnight. The only problem is that Will is a tough street kid who's had his share of run-ins with the law, and before long he's being hauled in for assault after a parking lot fight. Professor Lambeau (Stellan Skarsgard), who had brought up the math problems in his lectures, tracks him down and strikes a deal with the police: Will is to be released, provided he works with Lambeau on his math research regularly and attends therapy sessions.

This sounds like the formula for mildly charming fluff, but "Good Will Hunting" rises above its fairly mundane premise to deliver a poignant and clever drama. A conflict gradually emerges between Lambeau and Will's therapist Sean McGuire (Robin Williams) - Lambeau wants to get Will to use his brain, while Sean wants him to listen to his heart, both of which he has been largely neglecting. Will finds that the former is much easier than the latter, so much so, in fact, that he gets bored with it and grows increasingly resistant to Lambeau's attempts to recruit him into the academic lifestyle. He also has his share of problems with his girlfriend Skylar (Minnie Driver), an MIT student who is moving to California at the end of the school year and would like a reluctant Will to come with her.

What makes "Good Will Hunting" work so well, aside from the strong performances (especially from Damon and Williams), is the depth of characterization and the representation of the conflicts in Will's life. The script's sympathies seem to lie more with Sean McGuire than with Lambeau, but neither of them is presented as completely right or wrong. Lambeau, while he may seem a little cold at times, is still written well enough that we like him as a character even when we're not sure if we like what he has to say. And Sean, for all his warm-heartedness, has, as Lambeau and later Will point out, not lived up to his full intellectual potential either; the therapy sessions turn out to be just as revelatory for Sean as they do for Will.

Will's reaction to this situation, and the way in which he slowly becomes more receptive to Skylar and to Sean, is presented in a believable fashion and in a way that forces the audience to consider all the characters' opinions, rather than setting up an obvious "right" and "wrong" side and beating them over the head with it. For a film with such an extraordinary character, "Good Will Hunting" presents itself as remarkably ordinary; it achieves the difficult task of making the next Albert Einstein into an Everyman, a character to whom the audience can easily relate and who must make choices similar to those that almost everyone faces at one time or another. This film gives us real drama when it so easily could have given us merely melodrama, by having the government kidnap Will to use him in covert spy missions or introducing some other equally far-fetched situation.

"Good Will Hunting" also has its share of fun humor, such as when Will, in an early therapy session, pretends to be hypnotized and smoothly parodies the alien abduction scenarios that have become so well known in popular culture. And in the one scene in which government agents do in fact appear, Will blows them off with a hilariously scathing accusation of human rights violations in Africa. Will's relationship with his friends, most notably Chucky (Ben Affleck), is usually rather amusing, if somewhat crude (the film has 100+ uses of the 'f' word, which was most likely the reason for its R-rating), and lends itself well to the development of Will's character.

Add all this to the fact that "Good Will Hunting" even manages to pull off an uplifting happy ending without getting excessively sentimental, and you might be wondering why I haven't given this film four stars. Well, for one thing, no matter how well Damon and Affleck, who wrote the screenplay, and director Gus Van Sant pull it off, the story is still rather contrived and not particularly original. There are also a few scenes that did feel a bit formulaic, including one that was supposed to be emotional but really just seemed like the Obligatory Crying Scene for any movie involving therapy sessions. Still, "Good Will Hunting" takes its premise a lot farther than I thought it would, and is definitely one of the better personal dramas I have seen in the last few years, and as of right now it stands as one of the top five on my list of '97 films.

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