The Year of Living Dangerously-1982

Director Peter Weir

Starring Mel Gibson, Sigourney Weaver

Scott’s Review #1,266

Reviewed June 16, 2022

Grade: B+

The Year of Living Dangerously (1982) is a solid political drama with enough intrigue, romance, and superior cinematography by Russell Boyd to recommend it.

It’s not an American film but an Australian one, which gives it an authentic flavor even though events are primarily set in Indonesia.

If Mad Max (1979) didn’t make Mel Gibson a full-fledged pinup star, The Year of Living Dangerously certainly did because it made him a romantic ladies’ man in addition to a rugged action star. He has a ton of good looks and charisma at this point in his career and arguably has never looked better.

One could say (okay, I flat-out will) that Gibson is upstaged, unintentionally so, by stage actress Linda Hunt, who gets the role of her life as a highly intelligent Chinese-Australian man with dwarfism who is key to the entire plot.

Hunt won the Academy Award for flipping gender norms on their head and making the film more progressive and memorable than it deserves. Her performance is timeless and rich in character flavor.

If not for Hunt and Gibson as the standouts, the film would be lost in the shuffle among the myriad similar political dramas that emerged in the 1980s.

Missing (1982), starring Jack Lemmon and Sissy Spacek, and Victory (1981), starring Sylvester Stallone, are the films that remind me of The Year of Living Dangerously.

Blow Out (1981) and No Way Out (1987) are two of the best political drama films of the decade, and are assuredly influenced by All the President’s Men (1976), one of the best in the genre.

There are so many others that The Year of Living Dangerously feels forgotten and too similar to a standard formula to stand out. It also suffers at times from being either a romantic drama or a political thriller, and it struggles to mesh the two in a satisfying way.

After journalist Guy Hamilton (Gibson) arrives in Jakarta, Indonesia, he forms a friendship with dwarf photographer Billy Kwan (Hunt), through whom he meets British diplomat Jill Bryant (Sigourney Weaver).

Bryant falls in love with Hamilton and gives him key information about an impending Communist uprising. As the city becomes more dangerous, Hamilton stays to pursue the story. However, he faces more threats as he gets closer to the government, putting him and others passionate about the political turmoil in great peril.

The romance between Guy and Jill is not bad, but Weaver has had so many better roles than this one that it feels throwaway. She’s a smart lady who falls madly in love with Guy so easily that the formulaic context is obvious.

The movie poster makes the pair look like Rhett and Scarlett in Gone with the Wind (1939), unintentionally providing humor and ambiguity about what the film is going for.

It does best when it sticks to the political message.

The film is laden with foreign mystique and intrigue largely due to the exotic locale of Indonesia (the film was shot in the Philippines, which is a good double).

The plot is absorbing for what it is, and the peril the journalists face is exciting. This parleys well with the real-life situation the film is based on. In 1965, Indonesia was a hotbed of corruption and danger, and director Peter Weir managed to pull these sequences together well.

The main flaw is that Weir doesn’t seem to know if he is crafting a political thriller or a romantic drama.

Back to the astounding Linda Hunt, the best scene of the film occurs when her character dies in Guy’s arms.

Forget Weaver, the emotional core of the film belongs to Gibson and Hunt, who have tremendous chemistry. The ambiguity of Billy, mostly because we know the gender of Hunt, is delicious.

In the end, the conclusion is mostly a happy one, albeit predictable, and the storyline feels unsatisfying.

A nice effort and relevant in 1982, The Year of Living Dangerously has energy and polish. It just feels too familiar and similar to other genre films to stand out, save for Linda Hunt and Mel Gibson.

Oscar Nominations: 1 win-Best Supporting Actress-Linda Hunt (won)