‘They seem to think we’re quaint...’
I went into this film thinking it would be a slam dunk. Master director Peter Weir behind the camera, one of the all time great leading men in Harrison Ford in front of it. In the end, I found Witness pretty underwhelming. A film that never really decides what it wants to be and instead ends up falling between two stools…
When a young Amish boy witnesses a brutal murder, it is up to heroic police detective John Book (Ford) to keep the boy safe and crack the case. In doing so, Book ingratiates himself into the Amish community where he starts to fall for Rachel (Kelly McGillis) – the mother of the titular witness.
An interesting premise then, plus a lot of talent, but Witness is too meandering and too predictable to really make an impact. Sure, it looks fantastic, as all Weir films do, and Ford fully commits to the role, but Weir can’t decide if he’s making a procedural detective thriller, a fish-out-of-water fable, or a romcom. Witness has elements of all three without ever really committing to anything, and the result is an uneven film with moments of greatness that never actually threatens to be a great film overall. Danny Glover makes for a forgettable villain, and by the end I was just waiting for it to grind to a halt.
Maybe the whole Amish angle doesn’t really work in the UK, or maybe Witness is too tonally uneven to really soar, but either way, I didn’t care for this movie.