Review of Good Will Hunting (1997) by Goran T — 13 Nov 2012

The movie struggles to maintain "realness" by adding one bad experience on top of another to our characters' resume, trying to dig out every movie emotion in the book: child abuse, orphanage blues, death of friends in combat, loss of loved one to cancer and all of this delivered in a casual you-think-you've-had-it-rough type of tough-guy rhetoric appealing to the American lizard brain.

Add to that a persistent beat of TV-math brilliance and wave after wave of Zinn & Chomsky perverted into I-know-better-than-you cliche one-liners used against characters that are caricatures of our main characters (just like the people you identify with, only a bit less "real" and a bit more a-hole, because they haven't had it rough enough) and you've got yourself a clusterf*** ready to take you exactly nowhere.

And taking you nowhere - that it delivers. The message here is that you should leave the group that supports you the most because they really want you to be the best nihilist you can be, then join the system against your better judgment, because you really want to do that cute co-ed sporting a thick british accent and almost as "real" a personality as yours.

It's a bit of a 90% truth-10% bs situation, where the story gets you to believe the message and the message then directs you to oblivion of isolation and despair, where personal integrity takes a back seat to coping.

It offers the intelectually dead induvidualist a way to sink into the pleasant stupor of the-best-you-can-do confusion, as a civilisation dies around him.