Eyewitness

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.

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.

There are few films which boast such a first-rate cast:Christopher Plummer,Morgan Freeman ,Sigourney Weaver,James Woods ..And like in Hitchcock's "family plot" (1975),there are two apparently independent plots:on one hand,a shady business man's murder and a Vietnam veteran who becomes a janitor in the same building;on the other hand, a network which helps the Jews immigrate into the US.A fine thread connects the two stories:Weaver is the daughter of Jews who belong to this network and the fiancée (?) of one of them;and she's also a TV reporter who covers the affair I mention above;and she is also the janitor's idol.and...

When,after after almost one hour,the two plots become one,they do not hang well together(in Hitchcock's "family plot" ,the connection was very smart:a simple movement of the camera followed Karen Black ).And in spite of two spectacular scenes ,the rabid dog,and the horses which give the movie a fantastic touch,the story is at once implausible and predictable .Also handicapped by pointless minor characters such as Woods' sister and Hurt's father.This film does not rank among Peter Yates 'best.

Slightly offbeat murder yarn dealing with a pair of misfits who become involved in a murder which had nothing to do with either of them. This causes one of them to be targeted by an assassin who is involved in a love triangle between a woman and his intended victim. Strange film with a taut ending.

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