The only place this strange little concoction of suspense and heartfelt drama surfaces, as far as we can tell, is on a basic cable channel called 'Movies!', which prides itself on not whittling down its offerings in order to jam in umpteen commercials within a 2 hour timeslot. On the contrary, 'Movies' includes the unedited film as well as their umpteen commercials, with all this content leisurely stretching out their showings to 2 and a half hours or more.(Not quite, 'unedited' though, 'Movies' won't slice a frame of film, but they most assuredly will blank out the F-bombs and pixilate the nudity in their R-rated selections.)
So we finally managed to catch up with "Eyewitness" while it popped its head out of the ground like Phil The Groundhog in Puxatawney, Pa. Written by esteemed playwright/novelist Steve Tesich ("Breaking Away") and directed by Peter Yates ("Bullitt") "Eyewitness" plays out as a weird hybrid stitched together from Hitchcock films and the kitchen sink dramatics of Paddy Chayevsky's "Marty". William Hurt plays a returned Vietnam war hero biding his time as a New York City office building janitor. It's a lonely, quiet life he leads....he spends his spare time romantically obsessing over a patrician TV newswoman (Sigourney Weaver) whose reportage he tapes every night on his VHS machine. When a shady Chinese businessman, a tenant in the building Hurt cleans, turns up with his throat cut, Hurt spots Weaver doing an on-the-street crime scene report.....and seizes his opportunity to romance her. When Weaver predictably recoils from his advances, Hurt, in a hail-Mary move, maintains her interest by dangling the possibility of his having witnessed the crime. Adding to the complications is Hurt's best friend Waldo (James Woods) a fellow Vietnam vet, Unlike Hurt, Waldo's a snivelling, babbling, cowardly loser (played to twitching perfection, of course, by Woods) who quickly becomes a prime suspect in the Chinese crook's murder.
Screenwriter Tesich, a stranger to thrillers who primarily excelled in dramatic clashes of characters, labors mightily (and uncomfortably) to bend this material into a suspense nail-biter. Hence the suave, well tailored villain of the piece, (Christoper Plummer) who's courting Weaver while working with her parents to raise money to smuggle oppressed Jews out of Russia....the script vaguely implies he's doing this in the service of the Israeli government, and he comes fully equipped with a formidably silent Israeli hitwoman at his side. Plummer, as you might have guessed, is a means-justifies-the-end guy who has no problem with murder and though Tesich makes a few half hearted attempts to throw red herrings in your direction, you don't have any trouble figuring out who's doing what to whom.
The pleasures of "Eyewitness" come from Tesich regularly ditching the thriller elements of the film for the pure quirky joy of watching his well drawn characters interact. To Hurt's everlasting credit, he makes his moonstruck, adolescent crush on Weaver seem endearingly innocent, instead of a case of unhinged psychotic stalking(which it would be taken for today.....Tesich skims and skirts over Hurt's objectifying and unreal idealization of Weaver's uppercrust Grace Kelly-type character.....Hurt really knows nothing about her and she's properly bewildered at first. But eventually, as we the audience fully expected, Tesich has her melt for Hurt. In that regard, her character's not much different from the rich teen queens who fall for the nerdy shlubs in John Hughes movies) The script also throws in Hurt's unhappy relationship with his embittered, crippled father (the late,great Kenneth McMillan)....who's given a small unforgettable scene with Hurt that could have easily served as separate, gut-wrenching drama all by itself. The movie even takes a time out for some angst-ridden byplay between the two cops chasing after Woods (Steven Hill and Morgan Freeman).
Director Peter Yates, however, fulfills his appointed task of adding propulsive thrills to Tesich's overt dramatizing. You know Yates knows his stuff (Exhibit A:the "Bullitt" car chase up and down the San Francisco hills)....and he orchestrates some memorable set pieces, including a motorcycle/car duel and an unnerving method of attempted murder which we won't spoil if you haven't seen the movie.
Sure, "Eyewitness" remains a lumpy mixture of Hitchcockian chills, unlikely romance and squeezed in family drama......but for us, that's part of its unique charm, a strange convergence of an action movie director and a celebrated theater dramatist that we doubt will ever happen again. But BQ lives in hope.....we say 4 stars.
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