Brian T. Whitlock (GOWBTW) Being in journalism is a tough job. When you decide to go to the extreme, it can go either way for you. In "Death Watch", Roddy (Harvey Keitel) takes journalism to a whole new level. He joins this TV network who implants a camera in his brain. The company watches everything through the journalist's eyes. The person of interest is a woman named Katherine(Romy Schneider, 1938-82) who has a terminal illness. She avoids the network every way possible. For Roddy's case, he has a issue he has to heed. He has to be around light. But if he sleeps, or be in darkness for certain times, he would go blind. During the time he was trying to find his flashlight, the damage was done. And Katherine went to her first husband to later discover that she wasn't even that sick. So even blind, Roddy was able to reconnect with his wife. So where's the dignity in this movie? Can't the dying ever have their peace? It's having the news of your life, without the news crew present. It's not all trust in the future, it's all about the money. This is an interesting movie about the future. Simple, but subtle. The more you watch it, the more you know. Simple as that. Rating 4 out of 5 stars

sol1218 ***SPOILERS*** Futuristic movie about this TV reality show that has a person die live on TV from some unknown and incurable disease who's ratings have been going through the roof. It's up to the shows producer Vincent Ferreiman, Harry Dean Stanton,to get new contestants who are about to die on the show for a fee of $500,000.00 to $600,000.00 and let them do the dying for him live on TV! The latest contestant Kathy Graves, Romy Schneider, has been told by her quack doctor who works for the reality show a Dr.Mason, William Russell,that she's got not more then two months to live. Even though Kathy who seems to be full of life with a pair rosy cheeks and California surfer girl complication looks like the very picture of health! Kathy soon gets a bit fed up in becoming a TV star by dying live on the air and goes into hiding in the slummy section of Glasgow Scotland at a church run flop house for the homeless. It's later that reporter Roddy,Harvey Keitel, is hired by the TV studio NTV to track Kathy down with a TV video camera implanted in his head. It's then that Roddy like Gregory Peck in the 1969 film "The Chairman" can record Kathy's every movement up until the moment she dies of her fatal disease which will be broadcast live on NTV!As Roddy gets to know Kathy his opinions about her suddenly change in that she's not only some hot dish, in the cold dreary and drizzling Gasgow surroundings, but he suspects that she's nowhere as sick or dying of an incurable disease as he's been told by his boss TV producer Ferriman. In fact later Roddy's build in his skull video camera malfunctions that also provided him, who lost his sight by being a POW in some unmanned past war, with the ability to see.***SPOILER ALERT*** Joining sides with Kathy, who's now his both eyes and ears, that blind and clueless Ruddy gets to her, with Kathy's directions, first husband Gerald Mortenhoe's, Max Von Sydon, house on the Scottish coast who for the last six years has been writing classical music and getting drunk on 12 to 25 year old bottles of scotch whiskey. It's then that the truth comes out about Kathy's so-called fatal illness which is not only not fatal but had been made up by Ferriman and quack doctor Mason just to have her as a contestant on his top rated TV show "Death Watch"! You can't really blame Kathy in what she did at the end of the movie in seeing that her whole life was turned upside down by being exploited and humiliated by TV producer Ferriman. The best part about all that was that Ferriman had no way of getting Kathy's last moments on earth broadcast on his show since his cameraman Roddy, with his head installed TV video camera out of commission, had no way of recording it.

susan-191 This was listed on a commercial station (55- in NYC- thank you!) and wasplayed with mercifully few breaks. Still! An amazing, timely, quite profound and haunting movie. As mentioned elsewhere it is a bit ponderous and doesmeander, but the best moments are gorgeous. Spoiler?: (Harvey catching sightof the intimate moments he's filmed in a grocery store and realizing the betrayal of trust he has engineered.) The brief soliloquoy by Max Von Sydow on the lack of 'meaning' in life- which somehow is comforting! The version that another commentor mentions wherein Romy (and without youother cineastes I wouldn't know that this was Romy's last film- what a waste!) is not dying- is just being set up- that would make perfect sense. Harry Dean is fabulous- why doesn't he work more? Please consider upping the rating of this.

zazu-6 I don't know if it is on video, but I wish I could watch this film again, after 20 years the idea still feels fresh and alive. even though there is truman show, it is not even getting close to the greatness of this film. Today, I have told a writer who is working on a cyberfilm script, to go watch this film first. technology is only a tool (most scifi films tend to forget) in telling the story of 2 suffering souls. The humans are not lost behind the scifi gimmicks, the film is about us humans. watch this film, you really won't be disappoi