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Guy Hamilton (Mel Gibson) is a hungry young journalist from Australia who's just taken an assignment as foreign correspondent in politically unstable Indonesia to break out of a long stint in the newsroom at home. Upon arrival he is immediately befriended by the wonderfully intriguing Billy (Linda Hunt), a photographer who compiles files on his friends, finding solace from the chaos of political and economic upheaval by manipulating what he can in his life. Billy, who likes Guy for the inexplicable reasons that draw people to one another, helps him to get the break that he desperately longs for. The break makes him as a journalist, and the wave of confidence that it generates carries him into the seduction of Jill Bryant (Sigourney Weaver), an English diplomat who's leaving the country too soon to justify an affair. She succumbs, however, luckily for us, for the scenes of their passionate trysts are intense and exciting in a fresh young way. As the political situation begins to unravel, however, Guy is forced to yield his journalistic idealism to a forced acknowledgment of reality. An intriguingly complex and moving film from Peter Weir.
--James McGrath
Review
It would be wrong to say that The Year of Living Dangerously made stars of Mel Gibson and Sigourney Weaver; it solidified their stardom and also showed them to be fine actors. As Guy Hamilton, a young Australian radio journalist on the make, Gibson shows soul behind a pretty-boy face and magnetic eyes. His Hamilton is all modern ambition and quick answers until he runs into what director Peter Weir portrays best: the collision between new and old societies. Gibson's greatest success comes when Hamilton endures the pain of deciding whether to air a story that would expose British attach Jill Bryant (Weaver) as his source. His pain is compelling; in later roles (particularly the Lethal Weapon series), Gibson undergoes torture to achieve the same effect, a pattern that repeats itself in almost all of his successive roles. Weir portrays the Indonesia of 1965 as a place where Western blandishments ring especially hollow against the poverty, misery, and oddly spiritual life. He uses an unearthly score and bright, contrasty colors (especially the blue shirt Gibson usually wears) in the glittery, sterile palaces of the Sukarno regime to contrast with the dirt and darkness of Indonesia's poverty. And in Linda Hunt's Academy Award-winning performance as photographer Billy Kwan, Weir has a great voice for the despair that the poverty engenders. But the movie's grasp of Southeast Asian politics isn't as strong as the romance between Gibson's and Weaver's characters. As in Weir's later Witness, the romance stays in mind long after the civics lesson has faded. ~ Nick Sambides, Jr., All Movie Guide
DVD ~ Mel Gibson
DVD ~ Al Pacino
DVD ~ Humphrey Bogart
DVD ~ Mel Gibson
DVD ~ Simon Wells
