'WITNESS' & 'MEAN SEASON'

...On the other hand, there are three things that make Witness problematical: its love plot, its crime angle, and its study of the Amish...

...It starts on a compelling note...

...The score was composed by Maurice Jarre, who displayed the same general excellence and periodic loss of judgment in The Killing Fields...

...In part this is because of some standard faults in the thriller genre: the bad guys are just cardboard villains, played by actors (Josef Sommer and Danny Glover) too big for the parts...

...But he learns nothing among the Amish, nor do they learn or change because of him...

...one barn-building scene is robbed of all its sweat and elbow grease by superinspira-tional orchestration...

...Like the sensational journalism it first scrutinizes, The Mean Season exploits an issue rather than examining it for the public good...

...McGillis loses her Amish credibility when she mounts a mini-revolt against her father with an out-of-character set of impassioned one-liners attacking the religious establishment...

...That is, there is no direct interchange between the two worlds the film presents — nor even a comment on why there can't be...

...The theme could hardly be more significant...

...Although Lukas Haas — with unaffected, wide-eyed simplicity, and a nice dose of mischief — steals this show, its star is Harrison Ford, playing John Book, the detective who first shields his Amish wards and then has to flee town with them...

...Witness, he claims, "makes them open game for hunters from Hollywood who want to make an 'R' rated movie...

...The actors' look is genuine enough: even ballet dancer Alexander Godunov seems authentic as McGil-lis's rustic suitor...

...Nevertheless, not all the parts of Witness mesh into the whole it first promises to be...

...There was plenty of critical acclaim for the films and terms like "Hitchcockian" were a little too easily tossed around...

...The older man patiently and wisely explains that only evil can come from violence, and that we must never use a gun for any reason, even against evil men...

...Ford brings to his role the potential he has always displayed in his Han Solo and Professor Indiana Jones camp-ups: here, the wildly concentrated sometimes even weird, slightly glazed look in his eyes, is mellowed appropriately and combined with some excellent comic timing...

...The legal and moral aspects of Russell's conversations with the killer are lost in the standard surly exchanges between the reporter and one Commonweal: 180 of the detectives on the case...

...Like Absence of Malice — at first, at least — it dares to suggest that ego, not public service, sometimes rules newsrooms, and that the First Amendment can be a very convenient stalking horse for career ambitions...

...Next review: The Falcon and the Snowman and Blood Simple...

...Initially at least, The Mean Season offers a tale not just on how a psychopath uses the media (as Son of Sam did several years ago in New York), but also on how journalists create and participate in the news they are supposed to report...

...A serial killer phones a Miami Herald reporter...

...According to the minister, the Amish, already bemobbed by tourists (especially on the Sabbath), "have a right to be left alone," not treated "like animals in a zoo...

...The line is a marvelous touch, registering just how much the 22 March 1985: 179 Amish keep their perspective and the broad view of things...

...The grandfather takes the young boy aside and lectures him about the evils of guns after he has been caught playing with Ford's revolver...

...Unfortunately, the child is forced to take the short view too when he witnesses a murder in the Union Station lavatory, involving him and his elders in what first appears to be some old-fashioned "English" cops-and-robbers...

...Screen hit & miss WITNESS1 & 'MEAN SEASON' Between Christmas and the February holiday period, several crime melodramas — some by directors of distinction and others by near amateurs — were released, each providing at least the promise of thought as well as action: Witness, The Mean Season, The Falcon and the Snowman, and Blood Simple...

...Each, especially the latter, is intriguing in its own way...

...The dialogue concerns a hard ethical dilemma, which, to its credit, Witness raises in a dignified way...

...Like Absence of Malice, The Mean Season manages to use its sweltering Florida background as fit setting for the complicated corruption of those who, according to theory, are supposed to'' guard the guards...

...Several years ago a similar film, Absence of Malice, set at the same Miami Herald, had dared to suggest journalists sometimes unduly invade privacy, a charge which earned it consignment to the outer darkness from some of the media...

...All things considered, there is finally no reason for Witness to include the Amish at all...

...The audience at a local theater, where connois-seurship in regard to chase scenes is cultivated, started hissing...

...Witness concerns a murder observed by a young Amish boy (Lukas Haas) traveling through Philadelphia with his mother (Kelly McGillis...

...Indeed, Ford added a line to the screenplay, a witty imitation of a coffee commercial that falls flat among the uncomprehending Amish...

...Through a Lutheran minister on National Public Radio (they refuse to deal with the press directly), some have condemned what they regard as "commercial exploitation" and the inaccuracy of McGillis's representation...

...Later I reconsidered...

...There are three things, for example, that make Witness admirable: its love plot, its crime angle, and its study of the Amish...

...Improbabilities abound: although the police listen to tapes on the calls, they never tap the line or trace the caller's number...

...How sad it is to blow the chance to provide strong moral comment on such an entrenched and inadequately criticized institution...

...Who is right, to what degree, or when...

...together, the mix, though ambitious, is not especially convincing...

...To what degree can we tolerate "artistic lies," especially those dealing with the precious religious values of vulnerable minority sects...

...Finally, the music — mostly a pleasant synthesis of Vangelis and Aaron Copland — at times forces you to feel good before you're ready...

...The more serious problems of Witness involve the use of the Amish setting itself...

...The Amish are anything but 'R' rated...

...The police are naturally concerned...

...Australian Director Peter Weir here addresses issues that he either wouldn't or couldn't, pursue beyond the bounds of his basic story...

...McGillis is not thoroughly Amish and has some trouble keeping sultriness repressed, but she can also be convincing, particularly when rebuking Book for "whacking" people, a word she uses with the same distaste she displays when holding his gun as if it were a dirty diaper...

...It is their first venture outside Pennsylvania Dutch country, and they are proudly sent off by her father (Jan Rubes), who counsels them to "be careful of the English...

...the killer likes the reporter's columns on the murders and will call in tips on his next victim...

...Does Witness use the Amish, or broadcast their values, even if in diluted form...

...The movie provides a pleasant tour through a rarely studied world, and although there's a narrative cause for the trip (the murder occurs in Philadelphia), Weir provides no thematic case, no organic connection between crime and Amish subplots...

...Such stern ethics aside, there is surely a fundamental esthetic problem with the film...

...Their peaceful farm country supplies a place for Ford simply to hide out — instead of, more believably, going to the FBI...

...The complaint is serious and worth noting: The Amish are calling for a boycott...

...he also softens to a degree under McGillis's influence...

...the reporter (Kurt Russell), who was thinking of hopping off to a quieter life in Colorado with his girlfriend (Mariel Hemingway), starts to get notions of a Pulitzer...

...But it's just left there hanging...

...THE MEAN SEASON is a noteworthy failure...

...But the Amish themselves would not participate in the making of the film, and now have raised ethical objections against it...

...and I, although I usually have to look away at certain moments in films like this, found myself laughing instead...

...TOM O'BRIEN...

...Nevertheless, if I wasn't always frightened, I was rarely bored...

...Russell has to perform some routine chase scenes, including the old rush across a rising drawbridge and a new but hardly exciting heliboat pursuit in the Everglades...

...Unfortunately, The Mean Season lets this theme slide into poorly conceived and executed cops-and-killer...

...The boy doesn't buy it: mimicking the small but sure steps of logic of a seven-year-old, he says he has seen an occasion when he would have used a weapon...

...Director Phillip Borsos tries to spice up his stew with some standard thefts from Hitchcock: there's a shower scene from Psycho, and shots of the anonymous killer, only from the rear...

...But this problem is as old as Plato and as recent as similar complaints over Yentl...

...The boy's mother being conveniently widowed, she and Ford slowly — and believably — get close...

...The Amish assist him somewhat in the final showdown...

...One moment reveals the film's evasion...