Good Will Hunting (Blu-ray + Digital)

Gus Van Sant’s 1997 film, “Good Will Hunting,” adapts the screenplay by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, starring Damon as Will Hunting, a 20-year-old boy genius working as a janitor at MIT who comes to the attention of a prestigious mathematics professor, Gerald Lambeau (Stellan Skarsgård). Will runs with a crowd from South Boston including Chuckie Sullivan (Ben Affleck), Morgan O’Mally (Casey Affleck), and Cole Hauser (Billy McBride), all of whom are just getting by in life. At the same time, Will meeting Skylar (Minnie Driver), a bright young woman at Harvard. Due to Will’s rough-and-tumble life, he must attend court-mandated therapy as part of the parole agreement Professor Lambeau arranged. He ends up working with Dr. Sean Maguire (Robin Williams), another South Boston native who understands Will’s tough upbringing. The film balances Will’s budding relationship, his mathematics studies, and his psychotherapy sessions.It’s a clever film that makes the most of the class differences in Boston between the working-class locals and those attending the prestigious colleges and universities. Robin Williams gives an amazing performance while Damon and Skarsgård similarly work well together. The film’s massive success and place in the zeitgeist guaranteed parody, which Affleck and Damon themselves did in Kevin Smith’s 2001 film, “Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back.” It’s particularly clever in its references to historiography, psychology, and mathematics. For example, I never noticed how well-written the debate of Gordon Wood’s historical analysis was until I had finished my own graduate studies.Bonus features on this Blu-ray include a 4-part retrospective, audio commentary from director Van Sant and writers Affleck & Damon, 11 deleted scenes with commentary, a production featurette, the Best Picture montage from the Academy Awards, a music video for “Miss Misery,” behind-the-scenes footage, and the theatrical trailer. All around, it’s a good way to add the film to one’s home movie collection with a great collection of bonus features.

Excellent movie

I’ve watched this movie several times on regular tv but never finished it being was not intending to watch the movie. From a friend that insisted I watch the movie completely to get a real opinion I bought it knowing it was a great movie and liking all the characters and actors. Matt Damon from his early movies like this you could see he was going somewhere. The Affleck brothers you could see an early version of them coming to light. I really liked Robin Williams in this , he really excelled in this role. I can see why this movie was nominated for so many awards in the year it came out. Must see, plan on it and don’t put it off like I did.

The movie has a lot of power and great acting. They just about managed to wear out the "F" word by working it into every. . . . single. . . .sentence.

In this movie, an experienced actor Robin Williams is trying as a psychotherapist to resolve behavioral problem of a young genius man Matt Damon. The result of this therapy is duplicating of Williams life experience by young genius Matt Damon. The last Williams recommendation to young genius Matt Damon has been to look for a matched partner to perfect himself because no one is perfect even if is born genius.

Great

Not as good as I remembered.

Worked as advertised.