The Perfect Witness

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The Perfect Witness

October 13th 2011 04:21

The Perfect Witness (2007) was originally called The Ungodly, but either way, it’s guilty and wrong. This kind of inconsistent movie grates on me, and try as I might to not let it, it’s a losing battle. It’s riddled with implausibility, and it sports two thoroughly unlikeable, actually worse, uninteresting, characters – the obnoxious protagonist and the utterly boring antagonist – has them spout dialogue at each other and to other support characters like they’re in Acting 101, and fumbles with a climax as ludicrous as it is anticlimactic. The Perfect Witness suffers from delusions of immoral grandeur whilst trying to remain an edgy subversive thriller.

Wes Bentley as Mickey

Mickey (Wes Bentley) fancies himself as a filmmaker. His mother (Marcia Haufrecht) scoffs at the idea, as he looks like a bum. He has an editor mate Gino (Albert Lopez-Murta) who is reluctantly assisting him in a dangerous and highly ambitious documentary project: Interview with a Serial Killer. That’s not the title, but you get the idea. Mickey secretly videotapes James (Mark Borkowski) stabbing a woman to death in an alley, but Mickey notices him takes chase. Mickey manages to escape. But he blackmails James into being his subject matter for a doco. An uneasy acquaintance is formed.

The Perfect Witness Wes Bentley and Albert Lopez-Murta

Mickey discusses his modus operandi with Gino (Albert Lopez-Murta), while psycho James is frozen on the monitor

Mickey is battling his own demons, just as James is a tortured soul, exorcising the evil of his abuse at the hands of his mother as a child by raping and murdering young woman and plucking out their eyes to keep as trophies. Mickey wants to get the truth of the evil on tape, but James has other plans. The two of them are forced into a game of cat and mouse, or more like rat and manx. They are as vile and annoying as each other with no rhyme or reason to their behaviour. One minute they’re on top of their game, all slyness and shrewdness, the next minute they’re in fit of rage or a weeping mess.

James dishes out his tough love to a pretty diner waitress

The screenplay is the main culprit here. It’s written by director Thomas C. Dunn and Mark Borkowski, and being Dunn’s first feature the movie plays essentially as a vehicle for him and a calling card for Dunn. Wes Bentley is an associate producer, so he’s got his finger in the pie too. The characterizations are a complete hotch-potch, and Bentley’s over-wrought acting style borders on the histrionic. There are moments when the movie suddenly thinks it’s a black comedy, only to slip back into thriller mode with a tense and building score.

The Perfect Witness Mark Borkowski and Wes Bentley

James (Mark Borkowski) confronts his ailing abusive mother while Mickey captures the moment on tape

The straw that broke the camel’s back was when Mickey is searching for James’s abusive mother, believing her to be still alive and not dead and in an urn as James purports. He’s trying to persuade the records clerk to release a name, and she finally gives in saying “Only ‘cos you have an honest face.” Guffaw!! Wes Bentley has an honest face! Are you kidding me?! He looks about as honest as a mythomaniac. His face radiates creepy. In fact, he should have been cast as the serial killer, not Mark Borkowski.

The movie is technically competent, but director Dunn relies far too heavily on the Dutch tilt, and that’s a visual gimmick you use maybe once in a blue moon. But the movie relies heavily on the fractured, co-dependent relationship between self-aware psychopath (a contradiction in terms) and junkie filmmaker who manages to keep the wolves from the door only to suddenly shoot up and lose the plot during the climax. Like I said, the screenplay is the primary offender here. And Wes Bentley runs a close second.

Here’s the trailer:

The Perfect Witness DVD is courtesy of Gryphon Entertainment, many thanks!

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