My All Time Favourite

Rating: 10/10 (1 December 2012)

What can I say about this film? It features one of the greatest screenplays of the last 20 years, written by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, full of thought-provoking dialogue and some beautiful monologues, (My personal favourite is from Ben Affleck at the construction site about 3/4 of the way through the film). All the actors are great. Matt Damon perfectly embodies the role that he plays, an immature, cocky yet gifted boy in a world which he believes will wait for and build around him. Robin Williams plays an empathetic, yet gloomy psychologist who has never fully gotten over the death of his wife. Even Ben Affleck-haters will acknowledge Affleck's good work here, as Will Hunting's seemingly bonehead friend, who, as the film goes on, is revealed to be caring, empathetic man. Minnie Driver, Casey Affleck and Stellan Skarsgard round out the cast, all of whom give good performances. The plot is something many of us can relate to: An overconfident, intelligent man who cannot be bothered to realise his full potential. The insecurities of Will Hunting are fleshed out in great detail by the script, Damon's performance and Gus Van Sant's use of close ups for a lot of the major scenes, showing Hunting's emotions in detail. However, in some of the crowd scenes, such as in classrooms, Van Sant lacks a little imagination, resorting to the same camera pan sequence over and over again. Nevertheless, he is a more than capable director who delivers for the most part here. Danny Elfman's use of music adds to the heartwarming factor of the film. The film won two Oscars, Robin Williams winning Best Supporting Actor as well as Damon and Affleck winning Best Original Screenplay. In addition to this, Damon, Van Sant, Driver, Elfman and editor Pietro Scalia, earned nominations for their efforts. The film was also nominated for best original song and best picture. I would recommend this film to anyone, however, parents should be careful with letting their children watch this, as it contains a lot of coarse language as well as frequent sexual references. A superb work of modern drama.