L'oeil du témoin

This movie is great fun to see William Hurt, James Woods and Sigourney Weaver at the beginnings of their careers and when they were experiencing a good deal of success. The rest of the cast is top-notch. The story is very interesting and effective, though I found the film a bit uneven and slow.

There is a murder without an apparent motive, so the viewer is in the dark for over half the film. When someone is killed without the audience being involved with the "why", interest quickly wains. Such is the case with "Eyewitness". Despite totally acceptable acting from a terrific cast, the film seems slow and constantly bogging down in blind alley subplots. When the motive for the murder is finally revealed, it almost seems like it comes out of a different movie, having little to do with what precedes it. William Hurt is very good as the mild mannered janitor with a crush on television news reporter Sigourney Weaver. Christopher Plummer is very effective in bad guy roles such as here, or in films like "The Silent Partner". James Woods plays James Woods, which is always interesting. Overall though, things never come together, due mainly to the muddled script. - MERK

This 1981 murder thriller, from a big studio with big stars of the time, with corny vintage taglines and advertisements, is good entertainment squarely because it pays more application to its people than its story. It's indubitably set in America, from the innards of a Manhattan boiler room to the newsroom of a TV station, even though it's about such real, involved, curious, and occasionally hilarious people that it have got to at the least be transatlantic.

This underrated neo-noir stars William Hurt as a janitor who happens upon proof that could lead to the conclusion of a murder investigation. But he doesn't go to the police with it because he's too reticent, too reflective, too doubtful of what he's seen and, mainly, he's too much in love from a distance with Sigourney Weaver's TV news reporter. Perhaps he can gain her regard by giving her the inside story.

There are other dilemmas. Sigourney Weaver's fiancée is an Israeli agent played by Christopher Plummer, who is embroiled in cloak-and-dagger overseas interventions to smuggle Jews out of the Soviet Union. His plan concerns secret fees to a corrupt Vietnamese agent who has now moved to Manhattan. The other characters include James Woods, as Hurt's impetuous and short-fused best friend and recently fired colleague, and Steven Hill and Morgan Freeman as a couple of stoic cops who ponderously trace leads in the case. One of their memorably stoic quips: "When Aldo was a little boy, he must have wanted to be a suspect when he grew up."

The advancement and resolution of the murder mystery are handled rather conventionally by director Peter Yates, who made some great thrillers like The Hot Rock and Bullitt, and his screenwriter, Steve Tesich. A climactic showdown in a midtown riding stable and its barely existent denouement has a touch of every thriller from the 1980s. But what makes this movie so enjoyable is the way Yates and Tesich and their characters play against our assumptions. It shows that there really is no excuse for a lack of cutting edge or creative spirit in genre films, because this one achieves a very poised harmony of the familiar and the original, predictability and unpredictability. Genres rely upon the audience's savvy and familiarity, on the seasoning they've stengthened from seeing movies and the frame of comparable encounters from they can evoke.

Weaver is not only a TV newswoman, but also a determined pianist on the side and the dejected daughter of her oppressive parents. Hurt is not only a janitor but also an emotional introvert, an animal lover who can rhapsodize his way into Weaver's heart. Woods is not only an unhinged janitor but also the forceful advocate of a marriage between his sister and Hurt. Hurt and the sister continue the engagement because they are both too nice to tell the other one they're not in love. And as a mystery thriller, it gives us multiple conceivable suspects and resolutions to the murder it sets up as a way of misleading us until the proper time to reveal the killer.

I've seen so many thrillers that, honestly, I don't always care that much how they resolve lest they're particularly well-crafted. What I like about this buried gem is that, where it has regard for how it turns out, it has even more regard for the essence of its scenes. There's not a scene in this movie that just constitutes plot information. Every scene defines characters. And they're developed in such uncommon integrity to the way people do act that we get all the more consumed in the mystery, merely considering that we comparatively trust it could actually be real. Actually, I'm going to buckle and say that there is one tagline for this movie that is pretty good: "You're never more vulnerable than when you've seen too much."

A movie like "Eyewitness" would probably not get made today, at least by a major Hollywood studio. It's more of a character study than a straight thriller, and its pacing is decidedly leisurely. Actually, at first I thought that the slow pacing was a refreshing change from what is often the norm today in Hollywood thrillers. And it was interesting to see these particular characters with various motivations. However, eventually I admit I started to get a little impatient with the movie. It is simply too drawn out, and with some characters that have little to no impact to the main narrative. Also, there are some glaring unanswered questions, like why the Sigourney Weaver character does not contact the police when there is an attempted kidnapping of her. And who the killer turns out to be is a big coincidence in several regards.

The movie does have some pleasures here and there. It's fun to see a pre-fame Morgan Freeman, and there are some nice scenes here and there, my favorite being when the William Hurt character talks to his girlfriend at the sweatshop. But in the end, the movie doesn't quite make it. It isn't a terrible movie, but more likely than not you'll feel some significant dissatisfaction when the end credits start rolling.

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.