You won't be disappointed!

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Gorgeously filmed and aided by some excellent performances Peter Weir has made a great film in The Year of Living Dangerously. Mel Gibson plays a young Australian reporter stationed in Jakarta, Indonesia under the Sukarno regime. He befriends a dwarf Chinese- Australian named Billy Kwan and romances a Brit journalist Jill Bryant. The look of the film is good- It makes it seem almost akin to a documentary and there is a beautiful glow to each scene. All the actors are in top form- Gibson, Sigourney Weaver and especially Linda Hunt who plays the dwarf. This is a sweeping tale of morality, romance and political unrest. Another highlight is the score by the ever-reliable Vangelis.

Peter Weir's "The Year of Living Dangerously" gives us an Australian foreign correspondent desperate to prove himself in his career, a marvelously strange character as his photographer sidekick, sets the whole thing in the politically tumultuous Indonesia of the 1960s, and then can think of nothing better to do with any of this material than focus on a boring love story between two white people.Ah well. At least one of those white people is played by Sigourney Weaver, who is always watchable even if not given a very interesting character to play here. The other is played by, of course, Mel Gibson, who's not much of an actor now and wasn't then either, but is easy enough on the eyes. The movie's shining asset is Linda Hunt in the role of the photographer, an American Chinese dwarf named Billy Kwan, whose mysterious and ambiguous motives give the film what suspense it has, and far more than the "will civil war keep our two lovers apart?" story line that comprises most of the film. Linda Hunt won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her performance as Billy, to date the only time in Oscar history that an actor has won an Oscar for playing someone of the opposite gender.Grade: B

President Sukarno of Indonesia was able to maintain control of the nation by forging an uneasy alliance with the PKI--the country's communist party. However, this scared the nations of the West and upset both Muslims and the military which tended to be further right politically. This film is set in the mid-1960s....during Sukarno's final days as the true president of his nation. And, at this point the nation might swing to communism or become run by right wing reactionaries. Ultimately, the right staged a coup and kept Sukarno around a bit longer as a figurehead, but General Suharto and his supporters went on to butcher perhaps a million or more communists during a lengthy purge. Someone watching this film today could easily not understand this political context...as well as the country's nearing civil war at the same time Southeast Asia was in crisis.Mel Gibson plays Guy Hamilton, an Australian journalist working in the capital, Jakarta. His assistant, Billy (Linda Hunt) seems drawn to the left and does much to guide Guy's stories. At the same time, Guy has fallen for a British lady from their embassy--though she (Sigourney Weaver) doesn't sound the least bit British. Through the course of the film, the country moves left and then right...and danger abounds.This was a very well made drama, though I did have a quibble about the character played by Michael Murphy. He was an American reporter who could best be described as an evil, lecherous pig and it felt disingenuous to have him be the only American in the film...not that jerks like this guy didn't exist. Otherwise, compelling and worth seeing.

The chance to watch two future stars lock lips at their physical prime against the backdrop of an imploding Asian nation seems a great cinematic opportunity, but it's that emphasis that ultimately bogs down "The Year Of Living Dangerously."June, 1965: Guy Hamilton (Mel Gibson) is an Australian reporter sent on his first overseas assignment, covering Indonesia as communists and right-wing generals vie for control. He makes two important friends. Billy Kwan (Linda Hunt) is a crafty photographer whose amiable exterior hides a soul in torment. Jill Bryant (Sigourney Weaver) is a British embassy secretary who struggles to reconcile her sense of duty with her romantic feelings for Guy.Gibson and Weaver got star billing, but Hunt got the Oscar. That was fair. For much of the film, it's Hunt's performance that gives us a handle on what is going on. Kwan helps Guy land a scoop interview with head Communist D. N. Aidit, all the while pushing Guy not to lose sight of the human dimension involved, the suffering of the people and the unfulfilled desire for freedom."Add your light to the sum of light," says Kwan.That Hunt was a woman in a man's role gets a lot of attention, as does the fact the American plays a part-Chinese character. It's kind of pointless getting hung up on that. She's about the only thing in "Year Of Living Dangerously" that makes you care.It's not a bad movie, just a confused one, with long slow passages where Guy and Jill make small talk amid the bamboo. In one inane sequence, they run a roadblock and are met with a barrage of automatic-weapon fire, something they treat as a lark.I was more interested in Guy's teamwork with Billy, who uses his short stature to negotiate dangerous crowds and gives Guy the leads on important stories. "That little twerp knows everything," sneers a Washington Post reporter (Michael Murphy) who does everything but wear an ugly-American T-shirt for easy identification. Gibson and Hunt are an easy pair to like; Gibson with his put-upon mien, Hunt with her enigmatic serenity."Don't take it personally," Kwan tells Guy as he is menaced by an angry crowd. "You're just a symbol of the West.""Feel more like a spittoon," Guy answers.Eventually they fall out, over a story that Billy claims jeopardizes Jill. That Billy is angry I get, though we don't actually see Jill menaced for the information she gave and Guy seems to have no choice but to use the information. A labored connection is made between Guy's "betrayal" and a similar disillusionment Billy feels for Indonesia's embattled leader, Sukarno. Even when Billy is visited with personal tragedy, his over-the-top reaction is something even Hunt can't sell.The music is first-rate; so is the camera-work. You know you can count on those things in a Peter Weir movie, and the celebrated director indeed delivers. There are also several small moments, like one where a corporal of the guard at a scene already awash in blood briefly menaces a pair of helpless travelers before apparently taking mercy and sending them on their way with a smile.Too often, though, the film reaches for more than it delivers. The second half of the movie, when the romance between Guy and Jill is thickest, slows to a crawl. Putting the political intrigue in the background creates needless plot confusion just as things are reaching a boil. We don't even get to see the major crisis point in the movie, Guy getting his biggest (and last) story.The frustration with "The Year Of Living Dangerously" is ultimately more than it can manage. While noble in its refusal to traffic easy answers (despite what others say, this is not a "good-communist" movie), there is a failure to present the questions in a clear or compelling way. Instead, it is content to reference the Indonesian art of "wajang" and employ shadow puppets in place of clearer characters or setting, a poor brush-off of the need to tell a good story.