HARRISON FORD WITNESS ROGER EBERT MOVIE

I have never particularly thought of Harrison Ford as an Oscar-worthy actor, but he was nominated for Witness, and out of his many performances this is probably the most deserving (Roger Ebert states in his review that “Harrison Ford has never given a better performance in a movie”). In a few key scenes, the heat and never-quite-consummated longing between them is palpable. The chemistry between Ford and McGillis is at just the right temperature, not too hot and not too cold, subdued for the most part but never letting us forget the powerful attraction between them.

Which is not to say that McGillis is unattractive here, but in both appearance and demeanor she’s far removed from her sexy flight instructor in her other best-known role from the ‘80s, 1986’s Top Gun. McGillis deserves credit not only for her solid performance and convincing depiction of an individual from the Amish culture, but also for being willing to deliberately appear plain and thoroughly unglamorous (something some actresses might have been either too self-conscious or too vain to do). Kelly McGillis lived for weeks with an Amish widow and her children and took speech lessons to lend authenticity to her portrayal of an Amish woman, and it paid off. The central theme of Witness is the longing between two people who are desperately in love with each other, but are unable or unwilling to bridge the gap that separates them (this is the same essential theme of The Remains of the Day, and, though the comparison might not occur to everyone, Brokeback Mountain).Īt the time, Harrison Ford had already established himself as an action hero as Han Solo and Indiana Jones John Book proved he had enough acting ability to handle more low-key, serious dramatic parts, as well as to project emotion and conflict through body language instead of dialogue (Kelly McGillis does this equally well). Extraordinary circumstances have brought John and Rachael into each other’s lives when normally they would never have met, but their worlds are too different for them to ever have a life together. Sure, there’s suspense over when the bad guys will track Book down, and it builds to an exciting, well-handled climactic showdown, but the majority of the moments viewers are most likely to remember from Witness have nothing to do with them.

HARRISON FORD WITNESS ROGER EBERT MOVIE

At its heart is the forbidden love between John Book and Rachael Lapp the thriller plotline exists less as the framework of the movie than the vehicle to bring these two together. Witness has been described as a thriller, but while it has elements of that, it’s not the dominant aspect. Along the way, John and Rachael fall in love, but the shadow hangs over everything that the day will come when he will return to the city, if the bad guys don’t find him first. There she nurses him back to health, and he hides out among them, trying to blend into a culture that for hundreds of years has stubbornly resisted modernization, using hooks instead of buttons, gas lanterns instead of electricity, and horses and carriages instead of cars. But when the boy fingers a decorated narcotics officer (Danny Glover) as the killer, and the police chief (Josef Sommer) also turns out to be involved, events quickly send an injured Book, with Rachael and Samuel in tow, back to the insular Amish world. In the train station restroom, the boy witnesses a murder, and is questioned by cop John Book (Harrison Ford). Recently widowed Rachael Lapp (Kelly McGillis) and her son Samuel (Lukas Haas) travel to Philadelphia to catch a train to Baltimore to visit her sister. We open in an Amish community in Pennsylvania in 1984. What it’s really about at its core is love and longing, and about how the randomness of life can throw two people into contact long enough to fall in love, even if they can never truly be together. Witness is billed as a thriller or a crime drama, but that’s just the plot skeleton. Patti LuPone, Brent Jennings, Angus MacInnes

Harrison Ford, Kelly McGillis, Lukas Haas, Jan Rubes,Īlexander Godunov, Josef Sommer, Danny Glover,

Harrison ford witness roger ebert