EYEWITNESS

With a cast like this, it's amazing that the movie isn't better, but half the fun is mocking the dialogue and yelling at the characters.

I can't believe it—I did it again! I found another so-bad-it's-good Christopher Plummer movie! With The Spiral Staircase I'm two for two! And Eyewitness is full of before-they-were-megafamous faces!

William Hurt plays Daryll Deaver, a night janitor with a major crush on reporter Toni Sokolow (Sigourney Weaver). He tapes the news every night, just so he can moon over her commentary. When an influential businessman is murdered in the building where he works, Daryll has the perfect excuse to meet the object of his desire. He catches Toni's attention by pretending to know more about the murder than he actually does, then strings her along with the promise of more information for her story.

In truth, Daryll doesn't really know anything about the murder, and what he suspects isn't good. His best friend Aldo (James Woods) was hanging around that night, and he had a grudge against the victim. To make matters worse, Aldo has always been a bit of a loose cannon, and the police size him up by saying, "When he was a kid, Aldo must have wanted to be a suspect when he grew up."

Oh, but that's too easy! James Woods the killer? Come on! That's obvious! Christopher Plummer is the killer! I knew that as soon as I read the back of the video box, because he's not mentioned, and he's not obvious, and by not being obvious, he becomes obvious. Obviously.

Christopher plays Toni's boyfriend, Joseph, and he has a tiny secret he's keeping from her. Yeah, but we don't know what it is either, because Joseph is involved in an international scandal so complicated and so convoluted that you'd have to be taking notes to figure it all out, and it doesn't even matter. In any case, he's got that mischievous smile and that "just f*ing with you" look in his eye that I love so well, and you know he's up to something.

In the meantime, Toni is spending a lot of time with Daryll, even though he's full of corny sentiments, and seems a little creepy. He would have most girls reaching for the mace and screaming, "stalker!", but she really wants the scoop, and apparently she doesn't have very high standards, because she sleeps with him too. Icky! But it turns out that Daryll's really all right, and his crush isn't any weirder than the celebrity crushes the rest of us have. He just finds the opportunity to act on it.

As Toni and Daryll dodge thugs, flirt, and try to get to the bottom of things, Joseph is plotting a scheme of his own. Pretty soon he and Daryll are facing off in one of the most inventive showdowns I've ever seen. Daryll hides in the stables, luring Joseph after him. He quietly opens all the stall doors, then lights off firecrackers to scare the horses. The next thing you know, there are horses running all over the place, Joseph's lost his gun, and the two men are struggling on the ground. Poor Joseph's getting stepped on right and left, not to mention the fact that he already got hoofed on the noggin. Things can't end well for him, but it sure is fun watching him go down.

Eyewitness is one of those rare off-key gems that isn't quite up to standard, but is still highly entertaining. Everywhere you look is someone legendarily famous—Sigourney, William, James, Christopher, and Morgan Freeman. Even the minor characters are famous—Pamela Reed plays Daryll's girlfriend, and Alice Drummond (the librarian from Ghostbusters) and Kenneth McMillan (from Cat's Eye, Dune , etc.) play Daryll's parents. With a cast like this, it's amazing that the movie isn't better, but half the fun is mocking the dialogue and yelling at the characters.