Silent Witness

Valerie Bertinelli is Anna Dunne, a Pittsburgh supermarket cashier who with her garbage man husband Kevin (John Savage) witness the rape of Patty Mullen (Melissa Leo) by Kevin's brother Michael (Chris Nash) and his friends at the Happy Hour bar. Anna refuses to testify against Michael because of family pressure, but reconsiders because of Patty and the way she is slandered by the defence at trial.

Bertinelli has some good moments - her anger at how Kevin diminishes Michael's involvement where she yells in reply `He raped her!', the way she faces off against the intrusive physicality of the defence attorney Brad Huffman (Pat Corley), her swagger and intonation of `Aint that a hoot?' when she blackmails the District Attorney into putting her back on the stand to refute claims against her, and her explanation to the jury of why she had sex with an ex-boyfriend Joey Caputo ( Alex McArthur) when the defence uses it against her.

The teleplay by Conrad Bromberg presents Patty as a religious student and alcoholic whose blackouts prevent her from being able to identify the location of her rape. This is why Anna's testimony is so important, and the treatment amusingly has the police stalking her, playing on her guilt, much like Yves Montand stalked Barbra Streisand in On a Clear Day You Can See Forever in the Come Back to Me number, with the televised trial also on at her work. Anna finally erupts with `I'm sick and tired of being pushed around by everybody', to which she is told `Then push back'. Bromberg has Anna rationalise her inaction at the rape by `I had to look to see if it was real', and Bertinelli shows her ghoulish attraction and repulsion by the act. Once we get to Anna's testimony, we marvel at the ingenious of the Dunne family's manipulation of events we have previously seen to their advantage, and the way the focus of the case turns to being more about Anna than Patty, clues us that Kevin will succumb inevitably. That we aren't told of the trial's outcome tells us also that this is not Bromberg's priority.

Director Michael Miller supplies a delicate touch with the relationship between Anna and Kevin, and Patty. Anna's visit to Patty is particularly sensitively handled, so that can forgive Miller's occasional arty jump cuts. The rape is presented as a violent and un-erotic act, and more about the Dunne's reaction, though Patty's handkerchief wringing on the deciding footage that Kevin sees is unintentionally funny. We also question the hostility of Huffman, without objection by the Prosecution or the Judge, and the idea of casting someone as handsome as Nash to play a rapist.

EVER got in my face and spoke to me like the way the prosecuting attorney spoke to the women in this movie, I'd poke the a-hole in the eyeball. So the movie...good made for TV movie subject, but the acting, meh. And the editing, .....better to move along a little more briskly. Savage, Bertanelli, Leo and Thomas, aka John-Boy, (whose always extra creepy when he plays a creep), all hold their own for what this is. But still, that prosecuting attorney.... I'd thump him smak-dab middle of his Adam's Apple. Thwat!

A woman faces a dilemma. She and her husband witness her husbands brother and some guys rape a woman in a bar. At first she doesn't want to testify. The woman is an alcoholic and doesn't remember well. Will she testify against her brother in law?

Valerie Bertinelli is a sympathetic central character. Things are fairly watchable. Melissa Leo plays the rape victim.

I loved the allegiance for family portrayed. That is all I have to say....

I watch a lot of these kind of movies and this one was different, because it pits family vs. morality. It's her brother-in-law who is the rapist, who is married and has kids and his brother who wasn't involved but is also caught in the middle with his family and his wife. If his brother goes to jail - will they have to take care of HIS family when they are trying to start one of their own? Tricky emotions are played out here in this very well written story. I would watch it again.