terrific characters

Rating: 9/10 (31 December 2014)

Will Hunting (Matt Damon) and Chuckie Sullivan (Ben Affleck) are best friends and ruffians from south Boston. MIT Prof. Gerald Lambeau (Stellan Skarsgård) always puts a challenging problem outside his class for his students. Will is on parole, given a janitorial job and solves the problem. Lambeau is surprised that nobody claims the solution and puts another problem up. He catches the janitor doing the solution and helps him in his trial for hitting a cop. Will is a mess. He's an orphan who suffered as a foster child. He meets Skylar (Minnie Driver) but can't quite open up to her until he starts seeing Dr. Sean Maguire (Robin Williams). Maguire is Lambeau's last resort. They were college roommates and he is suffering from the lost of his wife.
These are great characters. The first meeting between Will and Dr. Maguire is electric. It is a couple of powerful performances. Will gets a twinkle in his eye when he finds Maguire's weak spot. Gus Van Sant does a good job mostly getting the great performances. Will has four relationships in this movie. Each one is fascinating and each one is given great material.