It's usually easy to notice the big things that go wrong with a film. One of the lead actors might as well be carved out of stone or the director has no idea how to end a scene or the script wanders about the countryside like a lost little girl. A lot of times, though, it's getting the little things right that elevate a movie from run-of-the-mill schlock to something worthwhile. The Perfect Witness gets just enough of those little things right to make this a decent flick, even though it gets its one big thing slightly wrong.
Mickey Gravatski (Wes Bentley) is a recovering drug addict who's been reduced to living with his aged mother. He has pretensions of being a filmmaker and has been obsessively pursuing a morally unorthodox way of getting his big break in show business. Mickey has been tracking a local serial killer and when he finally catches him on video killing a girl, he threatens to turn the tape over to the police unless the killer lets Mickey make a documentary about him. The murderer, James Lemac (Mark Borkowski), reluctantly consents and lets Mickey into his world but only long enough to kidnap Mickey's aged mother. That's when James makes it clear that a documentary will be done, but only on his terms and Mickey is forced to scramble for a way to save his mother and himself.
The Perfect Witness has much in common with many mediocre to bad films out there. The dialog is pedestrian, the camera work is mostly just okay and plot doesn't have much flow or pace to it. However, it consistently gets so many little moments absolutely right to distract you from its weaknesses and that starts from the very beginning. The movie opens with Mickey in a dark alley. He has his camera sees a woman burst out of a doorway, trying to escape from Lemac. Mickey is dozens of yards away and films Lemac stabbing the girl to death, then barely escaping with his life when Lemac sees him and chases after him.
Here's how filmmakers Thomas Dunn and Mark Borkowski get it right. Mickey's plan to blackmail a serial killer into doing a documentary is repellent and brutally selfish. He's really a terrible person for thinking of something like that, let alone trying to go through with it. But the audience doesn't know that when we first see Mickey in that alley. We don't know who he is or why he's in that alley, only that he witnesses a murder and then flees from the killer. Not only does that lead the viewer to empathize with Mickey, but you naturally classify him as "the good guy" because he's presented in uncompromised contrast to the bad guy. Even the way the scene is staged, Mickey is far enough away from the killing that you don't judge him for not trying to stop it. That opening scene is then followed up by some relatively subtle business that establishes both Mickey's down-on-his-luck circumstances and his desperate desire to make something of himself.
So, a connection is formed between the audience and Mickey. They're led to see him as "the hero" and then given the context of his life and what he's trying to do about it. That's when we find out about Mickey's awful agenda but by then, we're invested enough in the character to care. This story could have easily begun in a different way that didn't engage the viewer at all. It could have started with Mickey getting the idea of his serial killer documentary or dropped us into the midst of Mickey's efforts to track the killer or his planning of how to get him on film to blackmail him. The problem is that my reaction, and I think the reaction of others, to that would be "Why should I give a damn what happens to this horrible Mickey guy?"
These filmmakers understand that what Mickey is planning to do is awful and he's an awful person for doing it, so they need to get the viewer to engage with Mickey and care about him, even if in only a shallow way, before revealing his plan. I have seen so many pathetic excuses of motion pictures where the people involved have obviously never considered the nature of their story or the need to appeal to the audience. They're clearly caught up in how "edgy" and "cool" they think they are and just as clearly expect the audience to almost feel privileged to be able to see their cinematic masterpiece. The Perfect Witness never does any of that. It's always hitting the correct note in the right way to get and keep the audience's attention.
With all those little things just right, it becomes easy to forgive the film for kind of floundering for a point. This thing does not have the pace or plot to be a thriller and instead is going for more of a character-driven drama, setting up Mickey and Lemac as mirror image addicts with mother issues. But I don't think these filmmakers ever quite figured out what the point of that reflection was supposed to be and where it was going to lead to. That sort of confusion is usually fatal to a movie, but so much else about The Perfect Witness works so well that here, it's a minor annoyance.
The people who made this film are people who should make films for a living. That may sound like faint praise, but with all the filmmakers out there who should really be cleaning out septic tanks and doing land surveying for the local zoning board, it isn't.
Mickey Gravatski (Wes Bentley) is a recovering drug addict who's been reduced to living with his aged mother. He has pretensions of being a filmmaker and has been obsessively pursuing a morally unorthodox way of getting his big break in show business. Mickey has been tracking a local serial killer and when he finally catches him on video killing a girl, he threatens to turn the tape over to the police unless the killer lets Mickey make a documentary about him. The murderer, James Lemac (Mark Borkowski), reluctantly consents and lets Mickey into his world but only long enough to kidnap Mickey's aged mother. That's when James makes it clear that a documentary will be done, but only on his terms and Mickey is forced to scramble for a way to save his mother and himself.
The Perfect Witness has much in common with many mediocre to bad films out there. The dialog is pedestrian, the camera work is mostly just okay and plot doesn't have much flow or pace to it. However, it consistently gets so many little moments absolutely right to distract you from its weaknesses and that starts from the very beginning. The movie opens with Mickey in a dark alley. He has his camera sees a woman burst out of a doorway, trying to escape from Lemac. Mickey is dozens of yards away and films Lemac stabbing the girl to death, then barely escaping with his life when Lemac sees him and chases after him.
Here's how filmmakers Thomas Dunn and Mark Borkowski get it right. Mickey's plan to blackmail a serial killer into doing a documentary is repellent and brutally selfish. He's really a terrible person for thinking of something like that, let alone trying to go through with it. But the audience doesn't know that when we first see Mickey in that alley. We don't know who he is or why he's in that alley, only that he witnesses a murder and then flees from the killer. Not only does that lead the viewer to empathize with Mickey, but you naturally classify him as "the good guy" because he's presented in uncompromised contrast to the bad guy. Even the way the scene is staged, Mickey is far enough away from the killing that you don't judge him for not trying to stop it. That opening scene is then followed up by some relatively subtle business that establishes both Mickey's down-on-his-luck circumstances and his desperate desire to make something of himself.
So, a connection is formed between the audience and Mickey. They're led to see him as "the hero" and then given the context of his life and what he's trying to do about it. That's when we find out about Mickey's awful agenda but by then, we're invested enough in the character to care. This story could have easily begun in a different way that didn't engage the viewer at all. It could have started with Mickey getting the idea of his serial killer documentary or dropped us into the midst of Mickey's efforts to track the killer or his planning of how to get him on film to blackmail him. The problem is that my reaction, and I think the reaction of others, to that would be "Why should I give a damn what happens to this horrible Mickey guy?"
These filmmakers understand that what Mickey is planning to do is awful and he's an awful person for doing it, so they need to get the viewer to engage with Mickey and care about him, even if in only a shallow way, before revealing his plan. I have seen so many pathetic excuses of motion pictures where the people involved have obviously never considered the nature of their story or the need to appeal to the audience. They're clearly caught up in how "edgy" and "cool" they think they are and just as clearly expect the audience to almost feel privileged to be able to see their cinematic masterpiece. The Perfect Witness never does any of that. It's always hitting the correct note in the right way to get and keep the audience's attention.
With all those little things just right, it becomes easy to forgive the film for kind of floundering for a point. This thing does not have the pace or plot to be a thriller and instead is going for more of a character-driven drama, setting up Mickey and Lemac as mirror image addicts with mother issues. But I don't think these filmmakers ever quite figured out what the point of that reflection was supposed to be and where it was going to lead to. That sort of confusion is usually fatal to a movie, but so much else about The Perfect Witness works so well that here, it's a minor annoyance.
The people who made this film are people who should make films for a living. That may sound like faint praise, but with all the filmmakers out there who should really be cleaning out septic tanks and doing land surveying for the local zoning board, it isn't.