Witness

Great movie receives much deserved upgraded DVD
Made immediately after "The Year of Living Dangerously", "Witness" continued a winning streak for Australian director Peter Weir. His first "American" movie, "Witness" deals with the conflict between two cultures and, in a sense, two centuries as part of a much more conventional police drama about an Amish boy (Lukas Haas) who witnesses the murder of an undercover police officer in the men's room of a train station. His mother Rachel (Kelly McGillis) is traveling with the boy and both are drawn into the police investigation. What Detective Captain John Book (Harrison Ford) who is investigating the case doesn't realize is that someone is out to kill them both. As a result, Book goes undercover himself taking them back to the Amish community they come from and hiding out with them there until he can resolve who is trying to kill them.

Featuring a rich, startling performance from Ford and a powerful turn by Kelly McGillis (who had only appeared on "One Life to Live", a TV...

Harrison Ford shines in a well-crafted film
'Witness' is probably Harrison Ford's best film, and when it was released it showed him another facet of a gifted actor who until then had been known only to most moviegoers only as Han Solo and Indiana Jones. In 'Witness', Ford is police detective John Book, called to interrogate a terrified little Amish boy named Samuel Lapp, and his young widowed mother. An undercover cop has been killed in the men's room at the railroad station, and Samuel, hiding in a stall, is the only eyewitness. Samuel is unable to identify the perp from the usual log of suspects; but there he is, posted prominently on the precinct bulletin board -- a decorated narcotics agent. When Book relates his findings to the police captain, he ends up getting shot himself -- seems the captain is in on it as well. With the captain, the narcotics agent, and a third dirty cop gunning for him, Book needs a place to hide, and what better place than the Lapp house deep in Amish country?

The contrast between the...

Harrison and Thou
Although I suppose "Bladerunner" is the movie that showed Harrison Ford could do something outside of "Star Wars", I personally think "Witness" was one of the most important movies of his career, because it's a complete departure from a science fiction storyline, and therefore paved the way for all the Tom Clancy stuff and other movies that featured him as a romantic hero.

Here he plays John Book, a police detective who has to interrogate a small Amish boy who is the only witness to a brutal murder in a train terminal washroom. When the boy makes an ID that implicates a respected fellow police detective, Book gets wounded, but realizes that he must get the boy and his widowed mother (Kelly McGillis) back to the Amish country and go underground. Thus, much of the movie concerns itself with the fish out of water experience he has, trying to pass as an Amish man, learning about their life and falling in love with the boy's mother. This is dangerous territory for her, as her...

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