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Trust Weighted
Really Great
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80Trust Points
Wick's Review
Summary - Really Great 4.5 click to collapse contents
Good Will Hunting remains worth screening every few years, especially with youngsters new to it. Indeed, Matt Damon & Ben Affleck’s breakthrough stands the test of time, left-wing affectations notwithstanding.
Superficially about townies who turn the tables on elite geeks, Damon & Affleck’s Oscar-winning story is actually a meditation on attachment disorder, with Damon’s Will Hunting an intellectual pugilist who pushes people away before they can reject him. That’s deep and moving and fascinating all rolled into one.
Another Oscar famously went to Robin Williams for a most serious role, that of the therapist who figures out Will Hunting. Seven additional Oscar nominations speak to the movie’s depth of quality. One of those was for Minnie Driver, who shares the movie’s first kiss 45 minutes in to what is also a first-rate romance.
So what if Damon’s Hunting slips in a plug for Howard Zinn’s risible People’s History of the United States, and later unspools a Left Wing screed to an NSA recruiter. The two decades since Good Will Hunting have proved that the Boston Brothers from Another Mother are nothing if not consistently Lefty. They’re also humongously talented cinematic creatures, ill will towards American history notwithstanding.