2 months....

Here is a great review of the movie from Vincent Canby:

WILLIAM HURT IN 'EYEWITNESS'

Eyewitness

Directed by Peter Yates

Crime, Drama, Mystery, Romance, Thriller

R 1h 43m

By Vincent Canby
Feb. 27, 1981


A NOTE of warning to that portion of the movie-going public Alfred Hitchcock used to refer to as ''the plausibles'': Stay away from ''Eyewitness,'' 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.

Even the title is misleading. There is a murder in the movie, but the only eyewitnesses to it are the murderer and his victim, neither of whom is about to talk. Far better to call it ''The Janitor,'' which was the film's initial title, since there is a janitor in the movie who hints that he has information about the murder, though not even he pretends to have been an eyewitness. The title is a red herring, but then ''Eyewitness'' is an ebullient mix of red herrings.

The film, which opens today at the Criterion and other theaters, reunites Peter Yates, director of ''Breaking Away,'' and Steve Tesich, who won an Oscar for his original screenplay for that film. Here, they are working in another genre entirely, with immense enthusiasm and sometimes very casual attention to details. Because most contemporary movies, including comedies, are so earnestly second-hand in all of their inspirations, it's more than a little refreshing to come across a film that is truly, humanely, originally funny, even when it's cockeyed.

''Eyewitness'' has two plots to start with, and it's the desperate attempt to pull them together that, I fear, will send some people out of the theater with murder in their hearts. The only polite thing to say about such people is they lack poetry. ''Eyewitness'' is the kind of movie that discovers poetry and comedy in the most unexpected places, including once in what appears to be a shirtwaist

factory that otherwise has no reason for being in the picture at all.

Plot No. 1 is about Daryll Deever (William Hurt), a good-natured, serious young man who works as a night janitor in a large Manhattan office building. He likes the peace and quiet. Daryll is not especially bookish or ambitious. His dreams are not those of the upwardly mobile. His decency and worth are their own justification, which, you must admit, is fairly avant-garde in this day and age of commercial-movie stereotypes.

Daryll lives an orderly though essentally drab existence. He has two passions, his motorcycle and a growing obsession for a pretty, smart-mouthed television reporter named Tony Sokolow (Sigourney Weaver), whose nightly appearances at 7 and 11 he tapes on his Betamax to replay at his frequent leisure. Daryll is not a creep, but one of the odd things that keeps you hooked to ''Eyewitness'' is the fear that he may turn into one.

The other plot - and this is the one that is something less than totally convincing or even absorbing - is about an urbane Israeli intelligence agent, played by Christopher Plummer, whose principal mission is to ransom Jews out of the Soviet Union. The film's two plots come together when the beautiful, impossibly glib, ambitious Tony, the fiancee of the Israeli, investigates the murder of a mysterious Vietnamese businessman in the building where Daryll Deever is janitor. To get close to Tony, Daryll claims to know more about the murder than he really does. The ploy works only, as they say in such plot synopses, too well.

More than that I can't honestly report, not because I shouldn't give away secrets but because I'm not completely sure (after one viewing) what all the secrets are.

''Eyewitness'' is not terrifically strong on logic. Instead, it runs on the energy generated by its appealingly oddball characters, all beautifully acted by the members of a large cast of mostly New York actors. Daryll Deever is

probably one of the dimmest characters to be seen in any first-rate movie in years, but something happens in Mr. Hurt's performance to make him not only credible, but also important. He's funny. He's sensitive. He is logical (even when the movie is not). By some magical means that only good actors can employ, Mr. Hurt (also to be seen currently in ''Altered States'') convinces us that Daryll Deever has a mind.

Miss Weaver's Tony Sokolow also becomes a person of unexpected substance. The attraction that springs up between Tony and the hodrodding janitor, though as bizarre to them as it is to us, is completely believable. Mr. Tesich has the rare ability to crerate characters of weight and concern without half-trying. Those in ''Eyewitness'' also include Daryll's best friend, Aldo (James Woods), a guy who may possibly be a psychopath or possibly just eccentric, whose dearest wish is for Daryll to marry his (Aldo's) sister; Daryll's rummy old father, played by Kenneth McMillan entirely in a wheelchair, and Aldo's aforementioned sister, a tarttongued young woman played by Pamela Reed with the same kind of vivacity that made her role in ''Melvin and Howard'' memorable.

These characters didn't create themselves. They were written by Mr. Tesich and directed with great understanding by Mr. Yates, so effectively that after a while one doesn't worry about the logic that leads from one scare sequence to another and, ultimately, to a smashing finale shot.

Logic doesn't score in ''Eyewitness,'' but intelligence and feelings do. It says something about the age in which we live that a movie that contains these things must be called an eccentric treat.

Poetry and Comedy

EYEWITNESS, directed by Peter Yates; written by Steve Tesich; director of photography, Matthew F. Leonetti; edited by Cynthia Scheider; music by Stanley Silverman; produced by Mr. Yates; released by the 20th Century-Fox Film Corporation. At the Gotham Cinema,

Third Avenue and 58th Street, and Criterion, Broadway and West 45th Street. Running time: 102 minutes. This film is rated R.

Daryll Deever . . . . . William Hurt

Tony Sokolow . . . . . Sigourney Weaver

Joseph . . . . . Christopher Plummer

Aldo . . . . . James Woods

Mrs. Sokolow . . . . . Irene Worth

Mr. Deever . . . . . Kenneth McMillan

Linda . . . . . Pamela Reed

Mr. Sokolow . . . . . Albert Paulsen

Lieutenant Jacobs . . . . . Steven Hill

Lieutenant Black . . . . . Morgan Freeman

Mrs. Deever . . . . . Alice Drummond

Israeli Woman . . . . . Sharon Goldman

Mr. Long . . . . . Chao-Li Chi

I love “Altered States”. Such a crazy movie & Hurt nailed the part.