The Year of Living Dangerously

Name: The Year of Living Dangerously
Genre: Drama, Romance, War
Released: January 21, 1983
Duration: 115 min
Rating: 65
Cast: Mel Gibson, Sigourney Weaver

1983

METASCORE

Generally favorable reviews based on 9 Critic Reviews

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USER SCORE

Generally favorable reviews based on 26 Ratings

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7.7

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7.7	User Score Generally favorable reviews based on 26 Ratings

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The Year Of Living Dangerously

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Movie Details & Credits

MGM/UA Entertainment Company | Release Date: January 21, 1983 | PG

Starring: Mel Gibson, Sigourney Weaver

Summary: Guy Hamilton (Gibson) a journalist on his first job in Indonesia during the last years of President Sukarno reign. He is helped by his photographer, a half-Chinese dwarf Billy Kwan (Hunt) and diplomat Jill Bryant (Weaver) who he is having an affair with.

Director: Peter Weir

Genre(s): Drama, Romance, War

Rating: PG

Runtime: 115 min

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Metascore

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Critic Reviews

100

Roger Ebert

The Year of Living Dangerously is a wonderfully complex film about personalities more than events, and we really share the feeling of living in that place, at that time. Read full review

100

Michael Blowen

The movie masterfully evokes, through stunning direction and magnificent performances, the heat and passion of desperate people living in desperate times. [18 Feb 1983]

TV Guide Magazine Staff (Not Credited)

Ambitious, stylish, and ideologically confused, The Year of Living Dangerously falters in its attempts to succeed simultaneously as thriller, romance, and political tract, while also encompassing director Peter Weir's penchant for half-baked mysticism. Still, it's a gripping film. Read full review

Staff (Not Credited)

Here is an astonishing feat of acting by New Yorker Linda Hunt, cast by Weir because he could not locate a short male actor to fit the bill. A bizarre, yet touching, romantic triangle develops between Gibson, Hunt, and Sigourney Weaver as a British Embassy official. Read full review

Vincent Canby

Peter Weir’s The Year of Living Dangerously is a good, romantic melodrama that suffers more than most good, romantic melodramas in not being much better than it is. Read full review

Richard Corliss

The plot becomes landlocked in true-life implausibilities; the characters rarely get a hold on the moviegoer's heart or lapels. What saves this meditation on the vestiges of colonialism is, ironically, its celebration of American star power. Read full review

Dave Kehr

Peter Weir's attempt to make a "Casablanca" for the 80s - a romance set against a background of exoticism and intrigue - suffers from hazy plotting and a constant, pretentious mystification. Read full review

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User Reviews

Steven1981

Sep 27, 2020

Mel Gibson and Sigourney Weaver star in The Year of Living Dangerously.... Made in the early 1980's but Google says 1982 and it says on Metacritic 1983 so don't know what to believe but it's one or the other.... The Year of Living Dangerously is a drama, romance but war I'm not sure as I sawMel Gibson and Sigourney Weaver star in The Year of Living Dangerously.... Made in the early 1980's but Google says 1982 and it says on Metacritic 1983 so don't know what to believe but it's one or the other.... The Year of Living Dangerously is a drama, romance but war I'm not sure as I saw very little if any in the film but I did see soldiers or something that was very odd... Mel Gibson I think plays a journalist and I don't know the plot or story because it made no sense to me but the acting gripped me especially by Sigourney Weaver who is absolutely gorgeous in this film. There's a few love scenes but from what I remember no nudity if very little. Mel Gibson gets involved with Sigourney Weaver and we also see Linda Hunt from Kindergarten Cop who plays some dude which was odd and she wants to team up with Mel Gibson to be partners or some nonsense but a woman playing a dude is strange. There's some violence including Mel Gibson being bashed in the eye or something and we see blood pouring from his face yet he's stupid enough to try another dumb thing even though it may get him killed. The Year of Living Dangerously is dark in some aspects and light in others and the directing and acting is great and the chemistry and bond between Mel Gibson and Sigourney Weaver is cool. The story could of been better but the acting made up for it so overall a great film. Director Peter Weir did a good job here.… Expand

0 of 2 users found this helpful02

lasttimeisaw

May 13, 2014

“It is all opposite intensities” uttered by Linda Hunt’s Oscar-winning gender-switching role Billy Kwan in this romanticised screen adaption of C.J. Koch’s eponymous novel, THE YEAR OF LIVING DANGEROUSLY is a stereotypical westernised POV (intrigued but distanced from all recherché“It is all opposite intensities” uttered by Linda Hunt’s Oscar-winning gender-switching role Billy Kwan in this romanticised screen adaption of C.J. Koch’s eponymous novel, THE YEAR OF LIVING DANGEROUSLY is a stereotypical westernised POV (intrigued but distanced from all recherché curiosity) of the far east poverty and political uprising, set in Indonesia during the notorious 30 September Movement in 1965, a coup attempts to overthrow President Sukarno, but the bloodbath is tacitly eschewed in this picture.

read rest of the review on my blog, goggle cinema omnivore.… Expand

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

Spangle

Jun 16, 2017

As a filmmaker, Peter Weir is known for making slow and contemplative films that one could categorize as a sort of mood/tone piece, while being wholly aesthetic-driven. Capturing the gorgeous surroundings of his characters and always dropping his protagonists into deeply traumatic situationsAs a filmmaker, Peter Weir is known for making slow and contemplative films that one could categorize as a sort of mood/tone piece, while being wholly aesthetic-driven. Capturing the gorgeous surroundings of his characters and always dropping his protagonists into deeply traumatic situations that force them to assess who they are, what they are, and how they will respond to this unique experience, it is no surprise that Weir's films many times wind up focusing on a character outside of their comfort zone. In Picnic at Hanging Rock, everybody is thrust into discomfort when girls go missing in the beautiful Australian brush. In Witness, Harrison Ford plays a big city cop sent to Amish country, which is practically a foreign land to him. The Mosquito Coast finds Ford and his family in the middle of nowhere trying to build a new society. Dead Poets Society dumps Robert Sean Leonard into an all-boys school that is dated and a father who hates his acting loving son. Fearless finds Jeff Bridges in a plane crash that forces a full re-evaluation of life. The Truman Show pulls the curtain back on Jim Carrey's false life. Russell Crowe is forced to cope with the seas in Master and Commander. The men and women in The Way Back must traverse mountains, deserts, and freezing temperatures to get back home from Siberia. Encapsulating various life experiences that finds everybody from every walk of life covered in his filmography, Weir's film nonetheless share commonality beyond just dumping characters into truly adverse life and environmental conditions.

This commonality is largely found in the singular truth about the world: life will be challenging, but how one responds to those challenges is what defines them as a person. In The Year of Living Dangerously, Mel Gibson stars as journalist Guy Hamilton. Sent to Indonesia, a country at the brink of civil war between the dictator and the communists, he is tasked with covering the events from the capital for the Australian Broadcasting Services. While there he befriends an Indonesian photographer named Billy Kwan (Linda Hunt), meets other journalists, and forges a romance with British diplomat Jill Bryant (Sigourney Weaver). Along the way, he sees people cope with the struggles of living in a brutal dictatorship with children dying from disease and people starving in the streets. There are beggars on every corner and no Indonesian is truly spared from the horror of poverty and starvation. Relying upon Tolstoy to focus the audience's attention on what truly matters here, Weir poses the question to the characters and the audience, "What then must we do?"

Everybody in the film responds differently and it winds up being how they are defined as people. Initially using the impending war to build his own career and benefit himself, Guy Hamilton disappoints Billy by not using his position as a journalist to save the Indonesian people by calling to attention their need for humanitarian help. When Jill gives him a tip about the impending civil war, he broadcasts it without her permission. He discards his duty to the Indonesian people consistently in favor of reporting news. Billy, meanwhile, sees the horrors going around him in his own country and decides to take matters into his own hands by protesting the dictator with a sign hanging out of his hotel window. It does not work, but he nonetheless stepped up to the plate when needed. In essence, both answer Tolstoy's question differently. To the question of "What then must we do?", Guy agrees with Tolstoy. Weir calls this out in a conversation between Guy and Billy, in which Billy says exactly that: Guy agrees with Tolstoy. There is nothing to do, for it will just get lost in the shuffle. There are larger issues at play that cannot be ignored and these people, even if given a meal now, will just starve tomorrow instead. It is a hopeless endeavor to try and rescue them without solving the issues that put them in that situation initially. For Billy, however, he disagrees with Tolstoy. He donates money and time to a woman and her ailing son, while taking political stands against the government towards the end when the former does not work. He believes in doing whatever he can to help the people right now without relying upon the slow, but long, arm of foreign justice as is the case with Guy.

Yet, while the film's a largely compelling and engaging watch, it nonetheless feels too much like a Casablanca wannabe. As some critics have pointed out, Weir was clearly inspired by Michael Curtiz' master work, but unfortunately, The Year of Living Dangerously is harmed by this fact. Tossing in an ineffectual and useless romance with Jill Bryant to the equation, the film winds up feeling too distracted. It smartly tells its story of Indonesia and the awful prostitute-loving foreign press, as well as developing its central theme about how to respond to such horror, but it splits its time with the love interest.… Expand

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