In addition to the three free months of the Showtime channels DirecTV gave me, there was a free preview weekend of HBO and Cinemax at the end of September. I recorded Witness, not having seen it in ages, so that I could re-watch it and do a blog post on it. It's got an airing tomorrow at 9:04 AM on Movie Max, and then not another airing for another week and a half.
In the Amish country of Lancaster County, PA, Rachel Lapp (Kelly McGillis) has just become a widow. She's got a young boy named Samuel (Lukas Haas) and lives with her father-in-law. But before getting on with the rest of their lives, the two are going to spend some time to mourn with relatives in Baltimore.
This requires taking a train, and they'll have to switch trains in Philadelphia. Not that the relatively circuitous rote matters to them since they're Amish and time seems to stand still for them. But they're going to have to spend several hours in Philadelphia's train station. Samuel gets the chance to explore a small portion of the big wide world out there, eventually having to go to the bathroom. In the restrooms there's one other guy. But when Samuel steps into the stall to use the toilet, two other men come into the restroom and kill the first guy.
Poor traumatized Samuel, having seen a murder, is now a witness. Mom is deeply unhappy with this fact, but the police do need to talk to him and find out what he knows and if he can make a positive ID. The Philadelphia Police Departments sends in two men, John Book (Harrison Ford) and his partner Carter. The only thing Samuel is able to tell Book is that one of the killers is black like Carter.
When Samuel is taken to the precinct station for further questioning the next day, he does a little more exploring, which sets up a big problem. In one of the trophy cases he sees a press clipping of a narcotics bust led by McFee (Danny Glover). And Samuel recognizes McFee as the black man he saw in the restroom: this murder was an inside job. Further, McFee has figured out that there's a witness, so both Book and the Lapps are in danger. Indeed, McFee is even able to shoot Book, not knowing where the witness is.
So what's the best thing to do to try to keep safe? Take Samuel and Rachel back home for one. But at that point Book passes out from the effects of his gunshot wound, and is forced to convalesce at the Lapps' farmhouse until he can get better and figure out what to do next.
At this point there are some obvious Hollywood tropes such as the culture clash as Book tries to cope with the Amish way of life. There's also the fact that Book and Rachel begin to develop feelings for each other, even though there's no possible way Book could ever live the rest of his life the way the Amish do. And even though there's another Amish guy putting out feelers about being willing to take on fatherly and husbandly duties for Rachel, one Daniel Hochleitner (Alexander Godunov). But underneath all that, you know that McFee and the other crooked cops are going to find Book....
I'm really kind of surprised that Witness got all the Oscar nominations it did, because in rewatching it it didn't seem to me like the sort of movie that the Academy would recognize in the big categories (technical things like Art Direction, sure). That and considering all the tropes in the second half of the movie. But then Witness overcomes all of that, and is with one or two exceptions, an exceptionally well-made movie.
I'd guess that most people who were around in the 1980s would already have seen Witness. But if you haven't seen it yet, do yourself a favor and watch it.
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