Eyewitness

William Hurt plays a Manhattan Janitor named Daryl Deaver, who is obsessed with a local newswoman named Tony Sokolow(played by Sigourney Weaver). When a Vietnamese man with a shady past is murdered in Daryl's building, he takes full advantage of meeting his crush by insinuating that he knows more about the murder than he does. Tony goes along with him, flattered but unsure. When the true killers get wind of Daryl's story, they plan on eliminating him, and before they know it, their really is a conspiracy to report...

Good acting by its fine cast(which includes James Woods, Morgan Freeman, and Christopher Plummer) cannot save this contrived and unconvincing mystery, which just doesn't amount to much.

There are few films which boast such a first-rate cast:Christopher Plummer,Morgan Freeman ,Sigourney Weaver,James Woods ..And like in Hitchcock's "family plot" (1975),there are two apparently independent plots:on one hand,a shady business man's murder and a Vietnam veteran who becomes a janitor in the same building;on the other hand, a network which helps the Jews immigrate into the US.A fine thread connects the two stories:Weaver is the daughter of Jews who belong to this network and the fiancée (?) of one of them;and she's also a TV reporter who covers the affair I mention above;and she is also the janitor's idol.and...

When,after after almost one hour,the two plots become one,they do not hang well together(in Hitchcock's "family plot" ,the connection was very smart:a simple movement of the camera followed Karen Black ).And in spite of two spectacular scenes ,the rabid dog,and the horses which give the movie a fantastic touch,the story is at once implausible and predictable .Also handicapped by pointless minor characters such as Woods' sister and Hurt's father.This film does not rank among Peter Yates 'best.

Slightly offbeat murder yarn dealing with a pair of misfits who become involved in a murder which had nothing to do with either of them. This causes one of them to be targeted by an assassin who is involved in a love triangle between a woman and his intended victim. Strange film with a taut ending.

Vietnam war hero and Manhattan janitor Daryll Deever (William Hurt) is obsessed with hard-nosed TV reporter Tony Sokolow (Sigourney Weaver). A shady Vietnamese businessman is murdered in his office building. He was complaining about Daryll's racist fellow vet coworker Aldo (James Woods). Aldo has an alibi in Daryll's girlfriend and Aldo's sister Linda (Pamela Reed). It's a lie and he's come into a lot of money. Tony investigates the story and concentrates on Daryll who secretly found the body and pretends to know something to stay close to her. Her Jewish activist boyfriend Joseph (Christopher Plummer) is hiding a secret. Police detectives Lt. Jacobs (Steven Hill) and Lt. Black (Morgan Freeman) are investigating. Mysterious Vietnamese men are watching.

There are some great actors in this. I checked this out despite never heard of it. It has lots of interesting bits. This would work better with a creepier Hurt. He's very capable and his obsession starts that way. I think Linda gets into the way and she's not a necessary character. There are little disjointed and oddly superfluous moments like his dog attacking. Then the movie takes a really outlandish turn. It's too bad because this could have been a solid simple thriller. The turn ties together two parts of the story that really has no connection to each other. It becomes flat at that point.

For weeks I have been looking for the perfect structure of a screenplay. This film had me in the first ten minutes because of what it set itself up to be. The structure had the camera following one principle lead, going off to meet the other principle lead, who would subsequently go off to meet the character from which the major plot developed. "Eyewitness" is a great film which showed me what I have been missing throughout my entire movie-watching career. After you meet the principle characters through following them, some kind of sub-plot, or major plot, or principle theme, will develop, and it will truly free up the entire movie. This is basically the structure of almost every independent film I have seen. Not to be missed.