User Reviews

William Hurt plays a Manhattan Janitor named Daryl Deaver, who is obsessed with a local newswoman named Tony Sokolow(played by Sigourney Weaver). When a Vietnamese man with a shady past is murdered in Daryl's building, he takes full advantage of meeting his crush by insinuating that he knows more about the murder than he does. Tony goes along with him, flattered but unsure. When the true killers get wind of Daryl's story, they plan on eliminating him, and before they know it, their really is a conspiracy to report...

Good acting by its fine cast(which includes James Woods, Morgan Freeman, and Christopher Plummer) cannot save this contrived and unconvincing mystery, which just doesn't amount to much.

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

William Hurt stars as the brooding janitor in this sub-Hitchcockian thriller directed by Peter Yates (Bullitt). No-one in the film is quite what they seem, and Hurt plays the role of ambivalent hero/anti hero intelligently. Sigourney Weaver shows what a fine actress she really is whilst Christopher Plummer adds gravitas to the proceedings. Like Benton's Still Of The Night the film is well-crafted and often intriguing. Definitely well worth watching.

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.

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.

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.

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.

As I watched it, half an hour in I realized why I never heard of it...the storyline is all over the place, and the character motivations make zero sense. I have no problem with a janitor being the lead character, but his occupation isn't his life, even though the film keeps hitting us over the head with it. A fired James Woods begs for his job back, aren't there like a million janitor jobs out there? Sigourney Weaver isn't given much to work with, her character is either very bright or very dumb, though the film continuously implies the latter. The thing with the dog was confusing, weird, and pointless, perhaps a metaphor for the film as a whole. I sometimes get a kick out of seeing actors who reunite in other films, and here we see James Woods and Steven Hill, who were both in The Boost, a much more fascinating 1980s film.

William Hurt plays a janitor who knows more than he's telling about a murder. Sigourney Weaver is the TV reporter he's long had a crush on, when she shows up at the murder scene for the story, he sees his knowledge as an opportunity to meet her.

William Hurt in the '80s was like John Cusack in the '90s (and to a lesser extent, today) -- not every movie he's in is good, but his very presence seems to add crackle and interest to the dialogue. He is particularly impressive in his scenes declaring his feelings for the reporter. Really impressive, actually, and the movie is totally worth watching for those scenes.

The sad thing about Eyewitness is that it sets up some very interesting musings on honesty, people using each other, and principals vs. feelings, and gives us some fairly interesting characters to play with those musings, and then trades in the whole package for a conventional, if well done, romance/mystery. Ah, well. 7/10

Given the talent in this film, 'Eyewitness' should be far better than it is. It starts off interesting but devolves into far fetched and contrived nonsense pretty quickly. Hurt and Weaver are the best they can be given the material they have to work with. Look for the amazing Irene Worth, Chris Plummer and Morgan Freeman whose talents, unfortunately, are largely wasted here. The film wins no awards from us animal lovers either.

This 1981 murder thriller, from a big studio with big stars of the time, with corny vintage taglines and advertisements, is good entertainment squarely because it pays more application to its people than its story. It's indubitably set in America, from the innards of a Manhattan boiler room to the newsroom of a TV station, even though it's about such real, involved, curious, and occasionally hilarious people that it have got to at the least be transatlantic.

This underrated neo-noir stars William Hurt as a janitor who happens upon proof that could lead to the conclusion of a murder investigation. But he doesn't go to the police with it because he's too reticent, too reflective, too doubtful of what he's seen and, mainly, he's too much in love from a distance with Sigourney Weaver's TV news reporter. Perhaps he can gain her regard by giving her the inside story.

There are other dilemmas. Sigourney Weaver's fiancée is an Israeli agent played by Christopher Plummer, who is embroiled in cloak-and-dagger overseas interventions to smuggle Jews out of the Soviet Union. His plan concerns secret fees to a corrupt Vietnamese agent who has now moved to Manhattan. The other characters include James Woods, as Hurt's impetuous and short-fused best friend and recently fired colleague, and Steven Hill and Morgan Freeman as a couple of stoic cops who ponderously trace leads in the case. One of their memorably stoic quips: "When Aldo was a little boy, he must have wanted to be a suspect when he grew up."

The advancement and resolution of the murder mystery are handled rather conventionally by director Peter Yates, who made some great thrillers like The Hot Rock and Bullitt, and his screenwriter, Steve Tesich. A climactic showdown in a midtown riding stable and its barely existent denouement has a touch of every thriller from the 1980s. But what makes this movie so enjoyable is the way Yates and Tesich and their characters play against our assumptions. It shows that there really is no excuse for a lack of cutting edge or creative spirit in genre films, because this one achieves a very poised harmony of the familiar and the original, predictability and unpredictability. Genres rely upon the audience's savvy and familiarity, on the seasoning they've stengthened from seeing movies and the frame of comparable encounters from they can evoke.

Weaver is not only a TV newswoman, but also a determined pianist on the side and the dejected daughter of her oppressive parents. Hurt is not only a janitor but also an emotional introvert, an animal lover who can rhapsodize his way into Weaver's heart. Woods is not only an unhinged janitor but also the forceful advocate of a marriage between his sister and Hurt. Hurt and the sister continue the engagement because they are both too nice to tell the other one they're not in love. And as a mystery thriller, it gives us multiple conceivable suspects and resolutions to the murder it sets up as a way of misleading us until the proper time to reveal the killer.

I've seen so many thrillers that, honestly, I don't always care that much how they resolve lest they're particularly well-crafted. What I like about this buried gem is that, where it has regard for how it turns out, it has even more regard for the essence of its scenes. There's not a scene in this movie that just constitutes plot information. Every scene defines characters. And they're developed in such uncommon integrity to the way people do act that we get all the more consumed in the mystery, merely considering that we comparatively trust it could actually be real. Actually, I'm going to buckle and say that there is one tagline for this movie that is pretty good: "You're never more vulnerable than when you've seen too much."

***SPOILERS*** Love does strange things to people and the case of NYC office building janitor Daryl Deever, William Hurt, is a very good example. Throughout the entire film "Eyewitness" Daryl doesn't have a clue to why he's a marked man and what the reasons are for someone, or someone's, wanting him dead. What's more he doesn't even seen interested why! The guy is hopelessly in love.

Even at the end of the movie after a Charge of the Light Brigade down New York City's heavily traveled West Side with more bullets flying then even during the gunfight at O.K Corral Daryl doesn't at all seem to care what the reason for all this action and excitement is all about! All he has on his mind, all throughout the movie, is making it with channel Five TV live at five anchorwomen classy and pretty Tony Sokolow, Sigourney Weaver, who he's been secretly in love with ever since he saw her on TV six months ago.

Working as a janitor on the night shift Daryl finds that someone broke into the office of Mr. Long, Choa Li Chi, and murdered him. Daryl's friend and former army buddy Aldo Murcer, James Woods, had it out with Mr.Long and that argument cost him his job as a janitor. Aldo was also in the building the night that Mr. Long was murdered. This puts Daryl in a very uncomfortable position and has him withhold information from the police.

Seeing news reporter and anchorwomen Tony Sokolow at the scene Daryl just can't keep from trying to get to talk to her. Daryl concocts this BS story that he saw, which he didn't, the person who did in the unfortunate Mr.Long just to strike up a conversation and relationship with her. This harmless chat in the end leads the killer to overplay his hand thinking that Daryl indeed knows who he is and thus has to be eliminated! This also puts Tony's life in danger as well.

Terrific performances by all involved with William Hurt as Daryl the janitor who grew up on a farm who likes and understands horses. It's that valuable talent that in the end saved his life. Sigourney Weaver as the talented part-time concert pianist turned TV news anchorwoman who's attempt to get the big scoop on the Mr. Long murder uncovers things about a very close friend of her that she would rather not have known about.

James Woods in one of his earliest roles as the creepy and overbearing Aldo who's attempt to get his best friend Daryl to marry his sister Linda, Pamela Reed, backfires when Dayral meets Tony and the sparks really begin to fly. There was also a very moving scene between Dyral and Linda at her job where they both realized that they were not, and never were, in love with each other. Which freed them from the act that they were playing and allowed them to go on with their lives without the meddling and annoying Aldo running their lives into the ground. Aldo, if he didn't have enough problems already, is also into the mob for as much as $50,000.00 and with the cops looking for him in the Mr. Long killing, which the poor sap is innocent of, has him just about on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

The exciting ending where Daryl, who's mind is still in a complete fog to why someone want's to murder him, goes to meet the killer thinking that he's Tony's father and, I guess, wanting to ask him for his daughters hand in marriage. Instead Daryl is set up to be killed by the killer and his accomplice who, like Daryl, have totally different ideas to just how much and what he knows about the Mr. Long murder.

A movie like "Eyewitness" would probably not get made today, at least by a major Hollywood studio. It's more of a character study than a straight thriller, and its pacing is decidedly leisurely. Actually, at first I thought that the slow pacing was a refreshing change from what is often the norm today in Hollywood thrillers. And it was interesting to see these particular characters with various motivations. However, eventually I admit I started to get a little impatient with the movie. It is simply too drawn out, and with some characters that have little to no impact to the main narrative. Also, there are some glaring unanswered questions, like why the Sigourney Weaver character does not contact the police when there is an attempted kidnapping of her. And who the killer turns out to be is a big coincidence in several regards.

The movie does have some pleasures here and there. It's fun to see a pre-fame Morgan Freeman, and there are some nice scenes here and there, my favorite being when the William Hurt character talks to his girlfriend at the sweatshop. But in the end, the movie doesn't quite make it. It isn't a terrible movie, but more likely than not you'll feel some significant dissatisfaction when the end credits start rolling.

The actors are the interesting part of this film. The story is secondary. If you like Hurt and Weaver, you will enjoy watching. The story is a bit over-contrived. (I know, all movies are contrived). Their problems are not easily consumed by 'ordinary' folk. But then these characters are unusual people in peculiar circumstance. Their acting is quite good though. Well worth viewing just for that.

Despite the fact that it is already more than 20 years old, I admit that I had never heard of this movie before. That's quite difficult to understand, since there are a lot of famous actors to be seen in it. But apparently I'm not the only one. So far there are only about 700 people who have given this movie a rating.

Daryll Deever is a janitor in an office building in Manhattan who has one great passion: he is completely in love with Tony Sokolow, a TV reporter who he only knows from TV (he even tapes her commentary on a daily basis so he can watch it after work). When a wealthy Vietnamese man is murdered in the building where Daryll works, Tony shows up to cover the story. This is of course an excellent opportunity for Daryll to introduce himself to her and that's why he pretends to know more about the case. Of course she is interested and it doesn't take long before a romantic cat and mouse game between the two develops. But the killers think that Darryl and Tony really do know something and that's why they decide to go after them...

The best reason to watch this movie is the cast. It is always nice to see people like William Hurt, Sigourney Weaver, Morgan Freeman,... play an (important) role in a movie. But that's also about the only good reason that I can come up with when you want to know why you should watch this movie. The story isn't exactly world-shocking and the use of two - apparently independent - plots will not help you to forget that. OK, there are a couple of very nice scenes in this movie, but overall it isn't enough to save the sometimes implausible and predictable story line. But in the end I also have to admit that I've seen thrillers that are a lot worse than this one. That's why I give this movie a 6.5/10. It is far from perfect, but it's watchable.

Despite a cast with several big names, the generically titled 'Eyewitness' has found itself very much in the wilderness - I do have to say that I'm not surprised though. While this is not a particularly bad film, it is a very odd one as it pulls together two unrelated story lines and doesn't do a very good job of it. That being said, the film is at least fairly entertaining if you can get round several moments of very suspect plotting. Basically what we get here is an awkward love triangle born out of a man's lonely lusting over a TV star and a murder that happened in the place he works. Daryll Deever is a janitor at an office building in New York City. He is obsessed with news reporter Antonia Sokolow and watches her show every night. His world is rocked when a man is murdered at the office building where he works, and in spite of the fact that he doesn't know anything about the murder; he pretends he does in order to get his crush to spend time with him. However, the killers catch wind of this and begin to follow the pair in order to stop them uncovering anything about the murder.

The two plots of this film are not evenly balanced. In fairness to writer Steve Tesich; he does focus on the more interesting of the two, but that means that the whole murder plot is put so far on the back foot that you begin to wonder what it's there for. The main plot is tied in with this murder plot...but the way this happens is extremely flimsy and way too convenient to take seriously. William Hurt heads up the cast in the central role and presents us with a likable character. Sigourney Weaver is not quite glamorous enough to convince in her role; but she has great screen presence and it is always nice to see her on screen. The rest of the cast is filled out by names such as Christopher Plummer, Morgan Freeman and James Woods. The way that the film moves can be quite irritating at times as on several occasions; things are made far too easy to guess as we are often shown something and we see the character using it in the very next scene. Despite fusing two unrelated plots; the film doesn't really manage any surprises story-wise and the ending is rather predictable. Still, in spite of its problems; there are worse ways to spend one hundred minutes and the film is at least entertaining.

William Hurt and Sigourney Weaver are lovely to look at in their early acting days, but this convoluted plot from usually-talented screenwriter Steve Tesich takes both stars down a dead-end road. News reporter Weaver believes janitor Hurt may have seen something the night a businessman was killed in an office building, but Hurt--harboring a crush on the plucky gal--is just playing footsie, that is until the killers find out about him. The opening 20mns of "Eyewitness" are fine, if not thrilling; the production is glossy and the leads are well-matched, but Tesich's script just isn't offbeat enough (and Peter Yates' workmanlike direction is no help). The film gets bogged down in contrivances and overwritten characters, such as Weaver's parents and Christopher Plummer's sinister Israeli. Where is Yates' energy? It peters out fast, leading to an assembly-line finale. *1/2 from ****

This film may not be a great crime thriller to glue to the seat. But, there are a few interesting things in the film for film lovers, like a younger Morgan Freeman. Story goes mostly as expected.

"Eyewitness" has one really good scene. NYPD detective Morgan Freeman plops down next to his partner and says, "Julie and I are giving up. We're going to try adoption". It's a throwaway line and the scene has absolutely no bearing on the plot, but it's the only genuine character moment in the film.

This is pretty scattered as plotting goes and nothing works in terms of creating tension or characters (an injustice to its array of talent) but calling it boring is too simple. It's shocking how the opening credits give way to something that just . . . happens, then plods along for a while and finishes. All to a non-existent score. It's a thriller with no suspense, personality or feeling. In that respect, it's something unlike anything I've ever seen.

4/10

Parts are slow, and parts are non-sequitirs that don't quite add up. But the dialogues is marvelous, the acting terrific, and the suspense constant. Great bits by James Woods, Christopher Plummer, Stephen Hill, and Morgan Freeman add to the irony and the enjoymnent. It's fun to watch William Hurt before he got so jaundiced.

I remember this movie as being really great back in 1981. Weaver and Hurt were new and sexy and I guess the thriller part was thrilling... or something. Now, the two leads just seem oddly matched and the thrills aren't there.

The plot makes little sense. There are some inexplicable coincidences an irrelevant car/motorcycle chase and James Woods is ludicrously hammy.

Now I'm afraid to visit other Peter Yates films of yore. If Breaking Away and Bullit turned out to be as confused and lumpen as this movie is, I'll be disappointed. I've seen The Dresser recently and it's still very good.