In the film Good Will Hunting written by Mat Damon and Ben Affleck and directed by Gus Van Sant (1997) Will Hunting (Matt Damon) is a profoundly intelligent mathematician in the body of a deeply troubled, having been the victim of brutal abuse as a child and been left without a family, 20 year old janitor at the prestigious MIT in Boston. Will spends his days getting in trouble with a group of his neighborhood friends from South Boston, and in a dilapidated, stark lonely apartment and his evenings cleaning the hallways of this institution of great learning. One evening he stumbles upon an extra credit proof (math equation) posted by a Fields Medal Winning professor Gerald Lambeau (Stellan Skarsgard) for his students to solve and he proceeds to anonymously solve the difficult equation on the blackboard. When the professor discovers the correct equation he goes on a hunt for the anonymous genius and eventually finds Will, the janitor. Will in the mean time has one more brush with the law and the professor comes to his aid (with ulterior motives) and keeps him out of jail by agreeing to mentor him and by remanding him to counseling with a washed-up councilor named Sean Maguire (Robin Williams). Through the coarse of treatment both Will and Sean learn a great deal about life and love, Will through a relationship with a premed student, Skylar (Minnie Driver) and Sean through dealing with unresolved grief over the loss of his wife. (Van Sant 1997)
             Good Will Hunting is one of the most profound statements associated with free will and socio-economic determination in the modern popular media. It tells the story of a young man with exceptional and previously unrecognized natural talents rising above his relative lack of social support. Even the name Good Will Hunting is a play on the idea of a troubled young person seeking to find the good within himself so he might be able to hunt for and make choices of free will that the rest of us ...