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The Year of Living Dangerously Customer Reviews (13 - 15 of 27 Reviews)

Good but not great
I have watched a lot of dramatic movies, but this one just didn't grip me. One of the things that I found awkward was the 1980's score -it was just too imposing. Also, the visual quality was not that great on the DVD. However, it's still a fair insight into what was going on in Indonesia in 1965.

Edited for TV
I loved the original theatrical release of The Year of Living Dangerously. I watched it over and over. It was a beautiful, sensuous film. This is not the original. This DVD was the work of some hack who left the best parts of the movie on the cutting room floor. Gone is much of the gamelan music, many scenic shots of Indonesian countryside, and one of the hotest make-out scenes in cinematic history. Just as Mel Gibson and Sigourney Weaver are about to go at it the scene abruptly ends. Even the sequence of the original is changed. The over all effect is a coursening of what had been a classic. This was such a dark and murky print I still wonder if I somehow got a bootleg copy surreptitiously videotaped by some artless thug. I feel angry and cheated.
I recommend waiting until the original version is released. DON'T BUY THIS TRASH!

Always on my top ten list of great films.
My standard of excellence for films includes whether or not it can hold up over the years. This came out in '82 and viewing it again is as fresh a pleasure as when Year of Living Dangerously first came out. I always list it on my top ten films of all times.

The cast is superb: not only do you get a sold performance from Mel Gibson as Guy, a journalist, but Sigourney Weaver does a great job as a diplomatic attache and possible spook. The real treat was Linda Hunt, as Billy, a photographer and idealist who pins his hopes on Guy (Gibson) as a friend who can grasp the deeper, human issues in Indonesia and not just skim the surface as another Western journalist, trying to make his mark reporting on an unstable political scene.

Linda Hunt's performance as a man was so believable and superb, she won an Academy award. The film (made in the Phillipines) is not only a good view into the politics of Southeast Asia, but is a great story about a young man getting a baptism by fire as a naive journalist. If you haven't seen it, you are in for a real treat.

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