Wednesday, November 01, 2017

The Year of Living Dangerously

The Year of Living Dangerously is a 1982 award-winning film directed by Peter Weir and starring Mel Gibson, Sigourney Weaver, and Linda Hunt. It's on the ArtsAndFaith.com list of 100 most spiritually significant films.

trailer:


The New York Times calls it "an entertaining tale about an ambitious young Australian journalist, Guy Hamilton (Mel Gibson), who comes to Jakarta on his first overseas assignment determined to make a name for himself" and regrets that it's not a better film.

The Guardian focuses on the casting of Linda Hunt. Empire Online concludes, "Exotic love and war, guns and poetry, this delivers all the right ingrediends for to cook up a truly terrific war drama." Spirituality and Practice describes it as "A suspenseful, stylish drama about a journalist and the local man who helps him in Indonesia during the last year of Sukarno's reign" and closes by saying, "The film's overall impact, however, rests firmly on the intense and remarkable portrait of Billy Kwan by an American woman, Linda Hunt. She received an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress."

Roger Ebert gives it a full 4 stars and says, ""The Year of Living Dangerously" achieves one of the best re-creations of an exotic locale I've ever seen in a movie" and calls it "a wonderfully absorbing film." Rotten Tomatoes has a critics score of 89%.

4 comments:

  1. I remember it being pretty good. Linda Hunt deserved her oscar. This was back when I liked Mel Gibson--LOL! :)

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  2. I'm with Rita. Mel Gibson has truly lost my vote as a decent person, much less an actor. But I appreciate the review, regardless. Sometimes we can't throw the baby out with the bath water, but we can get new bath water.

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    1. I try to ignore actors' personal lives. Sometimes I can't get there, but I try.

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