Rating: 
Summary: An engrossing suspence/thriller!
Review: A friend reccomended this film and I have to agree with her, it was an excellent film. The suspence is almost painful and it has a great twist ending. The best movie of 1995!!!
Rating: 
Summary: In Moscow No one Can Hear You Scream
Review: As far as directorial debuts are concerned, Anthony Waller's Mute Witness is a very impressive start indeed. It is the type of film that thanks to the boom in DVD market, have been unearthed by the studios from their vault that contains dozens of excellent little films yet waiting to go digital.
A mute American film technician working on a small horror slasher in Moscow accidentally witnesses a 'snuff' movie..this of course leads to edge-of-your-seat chases that are very well filmed, and to the conspiracy behind this gruesome affair, at the centre of which reigns the greatest of them all, Sir Alec Guiness in his last film for cinema before his death (in 2000).
The plot is not flawless of course,(there are just a few, especially in the second half),but the brilliant directing and the development of the plot will more than compensate for that.
Think of Afraid of Dark (the hugely underrated and excellent Brit independant film about a nearly blind boy who also witnesses a murder), and Halloween 2 with its non stop chases down hospital corridors,and you will probably have an idea about Mute Witness. Having said that, it is still an original film (Moscow setting, 'Snuff' movies', Alec Guiness..), and not your average commercial suspense movie the genre and like of which litter the market.
Good performances by all, excellent direction,nail biting scenes, these are all good enough reasons to make Mute Witness a fresh little movie that can be watched and enjoyed again and again.
Rating:
Summary: Everyone I show this film to is hooked...
Review: Comparisons to Hitchcock's style are not unwarranted in this case. The first half hour of this film is a powerhouse of suspense that keeps you biting your nails and screaming "Run Mute Witness!!". Great fun! Just when you think you can sit back and breath a sigh of relief, it starts all over again. A great film for a late night scarefest or Halloween party. My friends and I have such fun watching this thriller
Rating: 
Summary: Starts well, ends badly.
Review: For the better part of an hour, Mute Witness is a first-rate thriller. So good, in fact, it was quickly becoming one of my genre favorites. Good premise, great direction, mostly terrific acting, smart writing, this one had it all. That is until just a bit past the one-hour mark, when the film suddenly makes a mind-boggling idiotic decision to change the tone and approach of the material, and it all devolves into a cheesy mess that left a sour taste in my mouth. This is the perfect example of a would-be great film that's merely recommendable thanks to an awful finish.Billy Hughes (Marina Zudina) is the make-up artist for a cheesy slasher flick being filmed in Russia. A quick intro shows us that she may be mute, but she's pretty good at her job, which she may have also gotten because her sister is married to the director. After shooting for the day is wrapped up, Billy stays behind and is accidentally locked inside the soundstage. Waiting for help to arrive, she stumbles upon two of the film's crew members shooting a porno film, which quickly becomes a snuff piece. After a fairly amusing opening scene and an effective set-up of the characters, Mute Witness kicks into full throttle quickly. Immediately after Billy witnesses the murder, we get one of the more suspenseful extended setpieces I've ever seen. These fifteen minutes consist of Billy creeping around the soundstage, desperately trying to avoid those crew members she just witnessed. It's a genuine breathtaking, edge-of-the-seat sequence, quite possibly the movie's highlight. But the fun's not over. A little over halfway through the picture, we get another great stalk-and-slash sequence inside Billy's apartment. You even get to see cutie Marina Zudina fully nude, in some of the more gratuitous bits of flesh baring I've seen in a while (to get the attention of a neighbor, she undoes her robe), not that I'm really complaining. Zudina is probably the best thing about the film, she's smart and likeable, a quick thinker who evades her attackers not because she's physically stronger or faster, but because she's smarter. (spoilers) While I figured the film couldn't possibly keep the momentum up, I wasn't expecting such a sharp turn of events, either. The film suddenly goes from edgy thriller to a cheesy spy film, packed with silly and predictable double-crosses and plot twists. The simplicity and stark atmosphere of the first hour is gone. The number of villains is bloated from two scary individuals to what is apparently the entire Russian mafia. The introduction of the undercover cop robs the movie of its key strength. The fun of the plot was watching Billy outthink and outsmart her attackers by herself. Bringing this guy into the mix shoves her into almost a supporting role and virtually reduces her to a mere sidekick/damsel in distress. Possibly worst of all is the decision to place Billy's sister and her husband into the thick of the action. I don't think I've ever seen such an extreme case of two characters who I initially liked that come to annoy me so much by the climax. These two are made into bumbling fools, they've basically become the film's comic relief. Attempts at humor include them accidentally killing the bad guys, dropping bullets in crucial situations, and generally acting as clumsy as possible but still somehow not getting themselves killed in the process. Director Anthony Waller had such a firm handle of the movie's pace and tone that I find it hard to believe he'd suddenly undo all his solid work in an instant. But the film's downward spiral is entirely his fault, the man wrote and directed the picture. He should have just stuck with what worked. But the first 2/3's are so much fun, it's worth recommending to thriller fans.
Rating:
Summary: now this is SUSPENSE
Review: i have seen this movie a thousand times and each time i watch it im still on the edge of my seat. this film is packed with suspense, murder and mystery. hitchcock would have loved this. i know i did.
Rating:
Summary: now this is SUSPENSE
Review: i have seen this movie a thousand times and each time i watch it im still on the edge of my seat. this film is packed with suspense, murder and mystery. hitchcock would have loved this. i know i did.
Rating:
Summary: Mute Witness
Review: I love suspense movies. This is THE BEST Suspense movie I have ever seen. If you like to be thrilled and truly "on the edge of your seat" suspense, you will love this movie.
Great Cast, Great style, Great everything. Don't watch it with young children.
Rating:
Summary: Mute Witness
Review: I was very hesitant about renting this on video because of the awful cover. It is overwrought and suggests nothing of the masterpiece within. In fact, it makes one think that it contains a cheap horror film, which this is definitely not. This is actually a good, solid thriller with a terrific lead performance by Marina Zudina. Director Anthony Waller shows he knows something about the--dare I say it?--Hitchcockian school of terror. Let's hope he does something of this caliber again. And watch out for that cameo by Mystery Guest Star.
Rating:
Summary: Infinitely better than the cover would suggest
Review: I was very hesitant about renting this on video because of the awful cover. It is overwrought and suggests nothing of the masterpiece within. In fact, it makes one think that it contains a cheap horror film, which this is definitely not. This is actually a good, solid thriller with a terrific lead performance by Marina Zudina. Director Anthony Waller shows he knows something about the--dare I say it?--Hitchcockian school of terror. Let's hope he does something of this caliber again. And watch out for that cameo by Mystery Guest Star.
Rating:
Summary: A Clever, Low Budget Scare 'Em
Review: I watched this again and was impressed once more with what an effective and efficient job director Anthony Waller did on a low budget. Its a small scale scare movie that utilizes all the cliches lovingly. Because it has, in my opinion, a strong story line with a sympathetic heroine, it works.
Evan Richards (Andy Clark) and his wife, Karen Hughes (Fay Ripley), have come to Russia to film a low budget horror movie on the cheap. They're using a cast of Russian actors and they're filming in what looks to be a huge, derelict warehouse/sound stage. Fay's sister, Billy Hughes (Marina Zudina), who is mute, is the makeup and props person. She gets stuck one evening in the place, can't call for help, and starts wandering around. She sees some light on the soundstage. As she gets closer, she realizes a porno movie is being filmed by a couple of the Russian crew using the props. Then she sees the porno movie turn into a snuff film as the actress is gruesomely slain on camera. Since she's mute, she can't scream, can't make a phone call for help and, of course, knocks over a chair so that the villians know they've been seen. The center of the movie is her staying ahead of the two bad guys as they search for her, using her skills and knowledge. The great, darkened warehouse is a terrific place for unexpected frights. The story line also involves a computer disc that contains data which will incriminate The Reaper, a shadowy and powerful crime czar played in a brief cameo by Alec Guinness.
Mute Witness is a good film with a very good transfer. One of the amusing aspects is the way director Waller set up the story line to parallel his own making of this low-budget movie in Moscow using mostly Russsians. When you consider how John Carpenter and the Coen Brothers, among others, got started in much the same way with low budget scare 'ems, this movie holds up very well.
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