
The love that begins to grow between them is not made out of clichés the cultural gulf that separates them, is at least as important to both of them as the feelings they have. Kelly McGillis, the young actress who plays the Amish widow, has a kind of luminous simplicity about her it is refreshing and even subtly erotic to see a woman who doesn't subscribe to all the standard man-woman programmed responses of modern society. Harrison Ford has never given a better performance in a movie. But all three elements work together so well that something organic is happening here we're inside this story. The ways of life in the Amish community are so well observed that they have a documentary feel. The love story by itself would be exciting. It is masterful filmmaking, The thriller elements alone would command our attention. In the whole middle section of this movie, he shows the man from the city and the simple Amish women within the context of the Amish community. "Witness" was directed by Peter Weir, the gifted Australian director of " The Year of Living Dangerously." He has a strong and sure feeling for places, for the land, for the way that people build their self-regard by the way they do their work. It's about two independent, complicated people who begin to love each other because they have shared danger, they work well together, they respect each other - and because their physical attraction for each other is so strong it almost becomes another character in the movie. It's not one of those romances where the man and woman fall into each other's arms because their hormones are programmed that way. Now it turns into an intelligent and perceptive love story. Up until the return to Pennsylvania, "Witness" has been a slick, superior thriller.
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He manages to drive them all back to the Amish lands of Pennsylvania before collapsing from loss of blood.Īnd it's at this point, really, that the movie begins. His life and the lives of the widow and her son are in immediate danger. Then it turns out that the police department itself is implicated in the killing. He stages lineups hoping the kid can spot the murderer. Harrison Ford plays the tough big city detective who gets assigned to the case. In the train station in Philadelphia, the little boy witnesses a murder.

His widow and young son leave on a train journey.
