Essential Resolution?

Rating: Null/10 (8 November 2002)

Twenty-year old Boston `southie' Will Hunting (Matt Damon) is madly charismatic and absolutely intelligent and understanding, but is, at the same time, a loose cannon; a roughneck-psychopath who lashes out at the nearest target. And while that may be the stark, conflicting, didactic point the film is making, it also serves as its weakest element. So what if he `finds himself' at the end by hugging Professor Sean McGuire (Robin Williams)  he's still a presumptuous and brazen maniac with severe psychological problems (and a societal mutineer that's half humanitarian, half dipsomaniac). I don't think he especially meets his match in McGuire  he just gains a friend with a solid foundation that only points part of Will in the right direction. Hunting has a photographic memory (he's like Dustin Hoffman's Rainman character without the autistic disorder, or Little Man Tate), and can solve problems that only frustrate Nobel Prize winning mathmaticians. Eventually, his talent is discovered by Professor Lambeau (Breaking the Waves' Stellan Skarsgard), who saves him from a jail sentence, and he is introduced to McGuire. Now, Robin Williams is one of my all-time favorites, but I didn't like him at all in this film  he plays the role far too cutesy. I didn't particularly believe his struggle, his stories or his fleeting tough-guy flash. He just seemed over-emotional and gooey, downplaying his high-strung energy. Likewise, he could've been brainier and more quick-witted; more of a match for Hunting (their silent chess-game should have been replaced with a shouting match of facts and figures). On the other hand, Skylar (Minnie Driver), a British student at Harvard, who falls in love with Will and tries to help him, is both absorbing and playful (just as she was in Grosse Point Blank).
So I have some objections with the film, but it's still, for the most part, a smart, involving story with good characterization. It's got individual flashes of brilliance within an otherwise predictable story. Apparently, Damon and Affleck wrote the movie years ago, and finally got to see the project made  good for them! In their defense, the two spin a great underlying theme about the working class, and how straightforward (and thus, romantic) it is to be an unassuming bricklayer. Will's best friend Chuckie (Ben Affleck) says it best when he tells Hunting, `You're sitting on a winning lottery ticket -- it would be an insult to us if you're still around here in 20 years.' I just didn't experience the essential resolution I was, perhaps, supposed to feel by the final frame.