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Dancing_P [ 5.0 ]
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Was mainstream suspense filmmaking really that dire in the 80's that this would garner such superlative praise? All signs point to Witness being the kind of genre-transcending film that rises above your average commercial product to become A GREAT FILM. Yet beyond some beautiful cinematography and interesting insights into Amish culture, it's a curiously unthrilling thriller and unromantic romance.
Harrison Ford plays a stressed-out bigcity cop who's assigned to a murder implicating a young Amish boy (Lukas Haas) as a witness. When it becomes obvious that a fellow cop (Danny Glover) might be involved, Ford is sent to hide out with the boy's family, eventually falling in love with his widowed mother (Kelly McGillis).
We're privy to who the murder and what his plans are from the very beginning so it's hardly suspensful or mysterious. The focus is rather on the fish-out-of-water elements of Ford in Amish culture; while it's mostly interesting stuff that's hardly been put on film before, it's not really enough to hang a whole movie on. A well-mounted barn-raising scene pretty much stands as the film's best moment, the rest of it being limited to Ford hemming and hawing about having to get up early and churning the butter. The love story is similarly robotic, never feeling like it's anything but shoehorned-in (especially since the whole thing hinges on the fact that it shouldn't be happening). It's an extremely generic film, just going through the motions expected of it as whatever genre hybrid it's supposed to be. There's some beautiful cinematography but that's hardly enough.
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JD [ 7.0 ]
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Harrison Ford hides with an Amish family in Pennsylvania until he solves the mystery which an Amish boy gets involved.This movie is really a couple of movies in one. The beginning and the end are action/suspense while the middle is a drama. Still, could have been MUCH better without the romance aspect with Kelly McGillis.
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Love_Spoon [ 8.0 ]
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Harrison Ford as the tough cop John Book, singing "Don't know much about history..." to Kelly McGillis is one of the sweetest things I've ever seen. This movie made it on my Top 100, albeit on the bottom third. Great movie.
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| Weighted Rating | : 6.7 |
| No. Ratings | : 15 | |
| No. Reviews | : 6 | |
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