Witness

Harrison Ford plays John Book, a Philadelphia cop hiding out in an Amish community after he discovers a drug ring being operated by his boss (Josef Sommer), and two of his fellow officers (Danny Glover and Angus MacInnes). 

Witness is a rather silly story given a good deal of polish by Peter Weir in what was his first American film and probably because of this it was a commercially very successful film. To be fair, given its templated heart Witness could have been a very ordinary police thriller but Weir lifts it well above the average by his attention to the Amish way of life and to Book's relationship with a conveniently comely Amish widow, Rebecca (Kelly McGillis), in a way that recalls his 1977 crime mystery, The Last Wave. That film similarly turned on cultural oppositions with John Seale’s photography and Maurice Jarre’s music working in a similar way here to that of Russell Boyd and Charles Wain in the earlier film to create a tonal underpinning for the story..

Although Weir is far from subtle, particularly in developing the Book/Rebecca romance over which he and Seale linger indulgently, it is these aspects which are the film’s strengths.  He is less successful with the crime aspects (which actually constitute a very small part of the film) which culminate in a shoot-out at the Amish farm.  Surely, one asks oneself, the bad guys would have been a little more inventive in their methods, or, in other words, the film's writers should have been.  

Harrison Ford was already an action icon from Indiana Jones And The Raiders of The Last Ark (1981)and the Star Wars films but here he tries his hand at a serious dramatic role.  He’s not very good but the film was a career-maker for Kelly McGillis who enjoyed a few years in the limelight with films like Top Gun (1986) and The Accused (1988) before fading from sight.The film also provided Viggo Mortensen with his first feature film appearance.

 

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