Eyewitness (1981)
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89% of critics liked it
(9 reviews) -
37% of users liked it
(1,602 ratings)
Fresh off the success of Breaking Away(1979), writer Steve Tesich and director Peter Yates re-team on a thriller starring a young William Hurt as a janitor infatuated with television reporter Sigourney Weaver. When she arrives at his building to interview the tenants about a murder that's… More Fresh off the success of Breaking Away(1979), writer Steve Tesich and director Peter Yates re-team on a thriller starring a young William Hurt as a janitor infatuated with television reporter Sigourney Weaver. When she arrives at his building to interview the tenants about a murder that's occurred on the premises, the janitor, having discovered the body, implies that he knows more than he's saying in order to keep the newswoman interested. Although he reveals nothing more, she does become interested in him, and when her nefarious aristocratic boyfriend (Christopher Plummer) learns from the unwitting woman that there's someone with knowledge of the murder, he's more concerned about what Hurt might know than about her relationship with him. Meanwhile, his paranoid, loose cannon of a friend James Woods has managed to get himself incriminated, although he had no involvement in the case. Hurt and Weaver continue to investigate the murder together, and as they become more closely entwined, both of their lives are put in jeopardy. ~ Michael Costello, Rovi
- Directed By
- Peter Yates
- Genres
- Mystery & Suspense, Horror
- In Theaters
- Feb 13, 1981 Wide
- Studio
- Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment
Critic Reviews
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Variety Staff, Variety
The story gets more and more strained before it's resolved.
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, Time Out
An enjoyable entertainment whose box-office failure was thoroughly undeserved.
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Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
Every scene develops characters. And they're developed in such offbeat fidelity to the way people do behave that we get all the more involved in the mystery, just because, for once, we halfway believe it could really be happening.
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Vincent Canby, New York Times
A thoroughly delightful but far from plausible mystery melodrama that operates exclusively on high spirits and a no-nonsense intelligence that is never sidetracked by coherence.
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, TV Guide's Movie Guide
Yates takes Tesich's basically wobbly story and makes much more out of it, driving the tale and the characters at a hectic pace and providing some truly unnerving moments.
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Cast
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William Hurt
as Daryll Deever
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Sigourney Weaver
as Tony Sokolow
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Christopher Plummer
as Joseph
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James Woods
as Aldo
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Irene Worth
as Mrs. Sokolow
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Morgan Freeman
as Lieutenant Black
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Kenneth McMillan
as Mr. Deever
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Pamela Reed
as Linda
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Albert Paulsen
as Mr. Sokolow
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Steven Hill
as Lieutenant Jacobs
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Alice Drummond
as Mrs. Deever
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Sharon Goldman
as Israeli Woman
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Chao Li Chi
as Long
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Bill Mazer
as Sports Announcer
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Keone Young
as Mr. Long's Son
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Mark Burns
as Man on TV
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Mischa Bogin
as Shlomo
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Jhoe Breedlove
as Woman
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Henry Yuk
as Vietnamese
- Jeremy Ritzer
- Howard Feuer
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Richard Dale Murphy
as News Crew
