Scott LeBrun The appealing Russian actress Marina Zudina plays Billy Hughes, an American makeup effects artist working on a slasher film being shot in Moscow. Also on the crew are her sister Karen (Fay Ripley) and Karens' boyfriend Andy (Evan Richards, "Society"), the director of this little epic. One night, Billy is accidentally locked inside the studio after hours. Soon, she stumbles onto the filming of an honest-to-God snuff film. And when these cretinous filmmakers suspect that they've been witnessed, they start relentlessly pursing poor Billy.Admittedly, writer / director Anthony Wallers' movie is at its most absorbing in the early going. It begins on a hilarious note, with a hammy actress overdoing a death scene to the point of absurdity. And Waller doesn't take too long to plunge his leading lady into danger. Some of his action and suspense scenes are *very* riveting, and you're on the edge of your seat (to use an over-used phrase) rooting for Billy to escape the villains. Fortunately, Billy *is* a resourceful character. One of the nicest touches happens when Waller uses special effects trickery to make a hallway seem to stretch out endlessly, as Billy is on the run.But Waller lessens the effectiveness of "Mute Witness" by having the plot get less interesting as it goes along. When a cop character named Larsen (Oleg Yankovskiy) is introduced, it's just not the same when our heroine is given some sort of assistance. Waller does manage to make Larsen continuously ambiguous, as you keep wondering what side he's on. And Waller turns Karen and Andy into goofy comic relief characters; Karen, at least, is proactive and fairly resourceful herself, but Andy is such an incompetent idiot that you keep hoping that the bad guys will kill him off.The pacing is effective for a while, and the filmmaking pretty slick. Zudina is wonderful in the lead, and receives strong support from Ripley and Yankovskiy. Richards is okay, but again, his character is annoying. Igor Volkov and Sergei Karlenkov are spooky as the bad guys. There's a real joy in seeing the "special guest star" who pops up in two scenes as criminal mastermind The Reaper.Even with its flaws, "Mute Witness" is so damn good during its better portions that it still comes recommended.Eight out of 10.

Paul Magne Haakonsen 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.

skywardpictures We all went to a Sony theater expecting to see another 1994 release, the theater did a test sneak and those who chose to stay saw Mute Witness, there was no press on it beforehand, the audience was the most scared and freaked out of any film I have viewed with an audience, more than The Exorcist or Halloween. Several people could not handle the material and left the theater, and after the picture opened, the theater soon pulled it, as it was over the top in suspense gore and subject matter, and reciepts may have been off as a result. If you pay attention, and stay with Billy on her struggle, allowing yourself to get caught up in it, this film is one HELL of a nail biter. On video, it isn't the same, you really need an audience, preferably one that hasn't seen it before, to get the full blood-curdling impact. Waller does a very good job and makes it look easy. It is a genre piece and moves the audience into safer territory near the end, I believe, to keep the form consistent with its stylistic opening. The film has its place in history with the most intense material ever put on screen.

paybaragon 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.