Am I Missing Something?

Go in cold, and you're likely to emerge with your blood boiling. This has to be seen to be believed.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

I had never heard about this movie prior to finding it by sheer random luck during a visit to the local secondhand DVD store, and at less than $2, it was an affordable chance to buy it.And having seen the movie already, I must admit that I sat there with a lacking sense of entertainment. The story in "Mute Witness" just wasn't particularly interesting or captivating. But giving the story the benefit of the doubt I stuck with it to the very end. But the story just never turned the interesting corner.The acting in the movie was actually okay, but the actors and actresses had very little to work with in terms of storyline and direction.I was surprised to see Alec Guineness making a short appearance in a movie of this type. Sure, his mere presence added something to the movie, but it just wasn't nowhere near enough to do anything to this train wreck of a movie."Mute Witness" just isn't really worth the time or effort.

This may be the most tension-filled movie I have ever seen.In fact, it's so nerve-wracking, I haven't been able to watch it again after viewing it two years ago, but I will since I have the DVD. There were a couple of scenes in here that are almost too much to watch....so if you've got problems and need to "escape" for an hour-and-half this film will get your mind off anything else. The Russian actress Marina Zudina did a super job in facial expressions alone, which she had to do since her character in here is a mute. She plays a cute and wholesome makeup artist for a sleazy filmmaker. After the day's shooting is done and "Billie" is about to leave, she hears something. She takes a peek into the room where they were filming and discovers they are now shooting a "snuff film" and actually killing someone. Billie's eavesdropping is discovered and she runs for her life as the killers go searching for her in this big warehouse-type building.There are two extended scenes in which our heroine is running for her life and both of them will wear you out. The first I described above. The second scene, the climactic one, goes on too long and isn't as well done as the first. In fact, the film should have been trimmed a bit but, overall, since it's so good at keeping our attention, then it served its purpose as entertainment.

A couple of years before SCREAM spoofed the slasher/horror genre with savvy, self-conscious young things knowing every trick in the book of what to do and not to do in a precarious situation, a little movie produced in Russia hit the theatres without any grandiose pretensions.This movie was MUTE WITNESS. Starring a cast of unknowns (except an extremely brief cameo by Sir Alec Guiness whose scenes were purportedly filmed eight years prior to the actual filming of this movie), it told the story of a mute make-up artist, Billie, who is working on a film on location in Russia produced and directed by her sister's boyfriend Andy. She is unaware that the set has closed when she goes to retrieve her belongings and inadvertently stumbles onto a porn shoot that becomes extremely bloody. Overcome with horror she alerts the murderers of her presence, a chase ensues, and finally she is rescued by Andy who take her home as they alert the police. The trouble is... there is no body, no evidence that anything of the sort took place. Even so, a mysterious inspector seems to be on Billie's side of the story....And to say more would be criminal. MUTE WITNESS is the kind of film that demands a scrutiny of viewing similar to the most intricate, clever thriller because as much as it is a convoluted thriller, it's one that pays its dues to movies like WAIT UNTIL DARK and the best of Hitchcock in its choice of camera cuts, deadpan humor, Americans reacting in foreign countries where they are powerless, and nail-biting suspense until it seems something must snap. Even if the story does become a little too implausible due to the fact that the story arc suddenly becomes the focus of an even greater conspiracy, the film succeeds in not trying to trick the audience with cheap shots (for example the sudden appearance of a person on camera accompanied by a crashing swell of violins) but with the fear of the unknown and that death is only a shadow away. Very smart.

This film is a superb technical exercise by a director who obviously has talent to spare. It's suspenseful for almost every minute of its running time. The film contains a number of very clever moments, some of which are quite funny, and all of which give the impression that the director has thought deeply about his craft. But the film has at least two major flaw. Firstly, the film is too busy, even giving the appearance of being rushed. This is, of course, intended to make the film more suspenseful, but there are sometimes too many suspense and action 'ideas' thrown together into one short sequence, and this renders a certain amount of the action quite implausible. Everything is played at the same fast pitch; there are virtually no sequences which manage to be slow-paced and dreadfully suspenseful at the same time; in other words, the kind of talent for suspense that we associate with Hitchcock. Nevertheless, for what it is and what it tries to do, this is superior as a thriller to almost anything else out there, with the possible exception of David Fincher at his very best. The other major criticism is that the film has no heart, no humanity. It's not simply that there is not time given to emotion and character development, although this is true enough. Nothing in the film ever particularly engages our sympathy, beyond wanting the heroin escape from her truly repugnant pursuers. Without humanity there is of course no real ethic or moral conflict to be found, and this in my view reduces the film to a great technical exercise which is hollow inside. There is a horrible murder scene in the film, and one desperately wants something (anything) to offset the ugliness. It's inferior to a film like 'Control Room' which balances brilliant suspense sequences with drama, created by minimal but effective exposition of the conflicting motives of the characters. In short, if you're going to be heartless and pitiless with your story and characters, you had better have the brilliance of a Hitchcock (or an Argento at his best) to make up for it. Anthony Waller is almost there, but not quite. Film trivia: Alec Guinness tells in one of his books how he came to do this cameo (which he almost immediately forgot about afterward). The director simply saw Guinness in a restaurant and begged him to do the scene. Guinness kindly obliged him by memorizing and speaking his handful of lines, which of course made no sense to him at all. Guinness' real voice is obviously not being used when we hear the Reaper giving commands via walkie-talkie in the climax. At least they could have taken the time to do a better impersonation of Guinness! It's probably the film's biggest technical gaffe, and certainly the most annoying.