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.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
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.
The Globe and Mail (Toronto) by Jay Scott
The Year of Living Dangerously is chic, enigmatic, self-assured - and empty. [18 Feb 1983]
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.
Chicago Sun-Times by 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.
The New York Times by 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.