| Title: | Movie Reviews and Discussion |
| Notice: | Please do DIR/TITLE before starting a new topic on a movie! |
| Moderator: | VAXCPU::michaud o.dec.com::tamara::eppes |
| Created: | Thu Jan 28 1993 |
| Last Modified: | Thu Jun 05 1997 |
| Last Successful Update: | Fri Jun 06 1997 |
| Number of topics: | 1249 |
| Total number of notes: | 16012 |
No note on Witness?
Star Wars made Harrison Ford a star, but this is the film which gave
him real credibility.
I have to say that Witness is one of my top 5 all time favourite films.
It's an intelligent thriller of the type that generally died out with
North by North West and centres on the attempts of the big city cop
(Ford) to protect a young Amish boy (who witnessed a murder) from the
killers. I have a horrible feeling that if this film was made today
they'd cast Bruce Willis in his 'God I wish someone WOULD kill him' Die
Hard character and it'd be rubbish, but John Book is an intelligent
man, with exactly the kind of measured lack of understanding of the
people he finds himself amongst.
Ford, Kelly McGillis and everyone else in the film play it perfectly
and the romantic interest in the film is perfectly judged (including
the scene where Ford see McGillis undressing...reminded me of a scene
in the French film, The Lacemaker's Daughter).
Anyway, enough from me. This is one of the very few films that I go
out of my way to watch more than one.
Mark
| T.R | Title | User | Personal Name | Date | Lines |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 886.1 | Used to be lots of notes on lots of films | NETRIX::michaud | Yosemati Sam | Thu Jul 20 1995 10:40 | 5 |
> No note on Witness? There used to be. See topic 27 for more info .... :-( | |||||
| 886.2 | MAL009::RAGUCCI | Fri Jul 21 1995 00:04 | 2 | ||
there's an old one....
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| 886.3 | Very well done! | NEWVAX::BUCHMAN | UNIX refugee in a VMS world | Tue Aug 08 1995 13:35 | 37 |
I agree on this; it was a wonderful movie, and successfully avoided
several Hollywood cliches to stay true to itself. Gave a wonderful
window into Amish life which seemed pretty accurrate. Beautiful
atmosphere!
Amish anecdote: in the mid to late 1960's, when silver coins were
replaced with the copper/nickel coins of today, my father used to drive
up to Pennsylvania to shop for fruit and vegetables from the Amish. He
would go to about four or five different stands and buy $1.05 worth of
produce so he could get a lot of change. The Amish distrusted the new,
non-silver coins, so they still had a lot of silver in their possession
even late in the decade. Dad accummulated a fair amount of silver in
this way :-]
<spoiler>
I couldn't understand why Book and his partner in Philly weren't more
proactive in protecting themselves against the corrupt policemen.
Surely they could have contacted some federal law enforcement agency or
someone in the media. One method would be to write up what was known or
suspected of the scheme, place it in the hands of some third party, and
inform the bad guys that it would be released to the press *if*
anything happened to either one of them. At the very least, his partner
should have made himself scarce rather than leave himself vulnerable.
An ironic / funny point: Book complained about being awakened "in the
middle of the night" for cow milking. Yet that habit saved his life,
because the baddies arrived when most normal families would be asleep;
but not them Amish.
Was glad that the movie respected reality enough not to arrange for
a happy romantic ending with Book and the Amish woman. It was a
beautifully done scene when Book was driving up the road, then stopped
just past the Amish suitor coming down the road, but eventually
continued on his way. What else could he do?
Jim
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| 886.4 | HERON::KHAN | Thu Nov 09 1995 07:40 | 2 | ||
Great movie.
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| 886.5 | Witness this! | HOTLNE::S_COLLINS | Mon Jul 29 1996 02:57 | 10 | |
Witness is an instant classic. Ford gives one of his most powerful
performances ever. The film will be remembered for generations to come. Not
only is he the #1 box-office draw of all-time, he can act too! Which is
rare, because most of your big box-office stars couldn't act their way
out of a paper bag.
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| 886.6 | Can I get a Witness? | HOTLNE::SHIELDS | Fri Jan 17 1997 00:41 | 11 | |