Stars: Robin Williams, Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Minnie Driver, Stellan Skarsgard, Alison Folland, Cole Hauser, Casey Affleck, Rachel Majowski, Colleen McCauley, John Mighton, George Plimpton, Stellan Skarsgaard, Harmony Korine

Director: Gus Van Sant

Summary: Will Hunting has the most brilliant mind at America's top university but the problem is that he's one of the cleaners and also headstrong and penniless. When he faces a jail sentence his fate lies in the hands of a therapist who might be the only man able to help him realise his true potential...

A South Boston whiz kid elects to clean the halls of learning rather than enter them, slumming his way through life as a janitor at MIT. But his natural ability to unravel complex equations attracts the attention of a professor who won't let him quit, a beautiful Harvard student who wants to save him, a sympathetic buddy who wants him to escape South Boston, and a counselor who encourages him. A soundly acclaimed, homegrown effort from lifelong Boston buddies Damon and Affleck, who pushed their script through development by disguising it as a suspense thriller.

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Robin Williams won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, and actors Matt Damon and Ben Affleck nabbed one for Best Original Screenplay, but the feel-good hit Good Will Huntingtriumphs because of its gifted director, Gus Van Sant. The unconventional director (My Own Private Idaho, Drugstore Cowboy) saves a script marred by vanity and clunky character development by yanking soulful, touching performances out of his entire cast (amazingly, even one by Williams that's relatively schtick-free). Van Sant pulls off the equivalent of what George Cukor accomplished for women's melodrama in the 1930s and 40s: He's crafted an intelligent, unabashedly emotional male weepie about men trying to find inner-wisdom.

Matt Damon stars as Will Hunting, a closet maths genius who ignores his gift in favour of nightly boozing and fighting with South Boston buddies (co-writer Ben Affleck among them). While working as a university janitor, he solves an impossible calculus problem scribbled on a hallway blackboard and reluctantly becomes the prodigy of an arrogant MIT professor (Stellan Skarsgård). Damon only avoids prison by agreeing to see psychiatrists, all of whom he mocks or psychologically destroys until he meets his match in the professor's former childhood friend, played by Williams. Both doctor and patient are haunted by the past and, as mutual respect develops, the healing process begins. The film's beauty lies not with grand climaxes, but with small, quiet moments. Scenes such as Affleck's clumsy pep talk to Damon while they drink beer after work, or any number of therapy session between Williams and Damon offer poignant looks at the awkward ways men show affection and feeling for one another. --Dave McCoy

Aspect Ratio:	1.85 Wide Screen
Main Language:	English
Region:	Region 2
Subtitles:	English
Year:	1997
Release Date:	January 22, 2001
Runtime:	121 minutes
Certification:
Catalogue Number:	B E D 888203
Label:	Miramax
Keywords:	Will, General, Wide, Screen, Good, Hunting, Drama
Genre:	Drama