Young, recently widowed Amish mother Rachel Lapp ( Kelly McGillis) and her young son Samuel ( Lukas Haas) travel by train through Pennsylvania, headed to see Rachel’s sister.
THE WITNESS MOVIE MOVIE
And really, aside from his great work, the movie itself is a terrific story, well-directed and acted with a supporting cast that make this still one of the best movies about, well, the Amish, ever made, but also cop thrillers in general. Ford deserves all the credit he gets, delivering a smart, impactful performance that relies on the actor’s considerable charms and intensity in all new ways, his interpretation on screen much more reserved that what we’d, at that time, came to expect. Amid these huge blockbusters though, he snuck in a few not-so-iconicy titles that offered him a chance to spread his wings a bit in terms of diverse characters, such as the now beloved Rick Deckard from Blade Runner, however it was with Peter Weir‘s Witness where he finally earned some real acting cred, earning himself his only Academy Award acting nomination so far … though I smell me a Governors Award coming soon.Įither way, Witness had film critics slathering all kinds of love upon and it did pretty darned well at the box office, despite no Wookies and and a decided lack of a fedora, though there’s plenty of straw hats.
You won't.Witness is a 1985 thriller about a young Amish boy is sole witness to a murder policeman John Book goes into hiding in Amish country to protect him until the trial.īy the middle of the 1980s Harrison Ford was one of the biggest movie stars on the planet, being part of both the Star Wars and Indiana Jones film franchises, making him arguably the most successful action star of his time … and he was only getting started. The Witness takes a very grim and depressing event and turns it inside out by placing you as close to the action as possible, then gently daring you to not look away. But you're never invited to pity Bill, and you won't. This is largely in credit to Bill Genovese who displays incredible honesty, tolerance, and courage as he uncovers holes, detours, and details in his sister's senseless murder and it's subsequent reporting and media blitz that are shocking and very disturbing. Filmmaker James Solomon holds back nothing while holding his subjects in nothing but the utmost respect. What you thought you knew for certain may not be true, just as what Kitty's brother Bill assumed was fact and based many of his voluntary (and involuntary) life decisions upon for the rest of his life. You know, the woman who screamed for help and was murdered over a 35 minute period while her neighbors did nothing to assist her? Or did they? And that's where The Witness really goes in for the choke. I'm old enough to remember the murder of Kitty Genovese or at least the aftermath. My jaw dropped, my eyes wet, I got very angry - everything you want from a good documentary. The Witness, by contrast, kept me riveted. Yet The Lovers and The Despot put me to sleep. In scale, the two subjects don't match at all: one woman's senseless 50-year-old slaying against a couple of South Korean filmmakers captive to the whims of Kim Jong Il. I saw this new doc at a double play with The Lovers and The Despot and the two films couldn't be more different.
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