Eyewitness (1981 film)


Eyewitness is a 1981 American neo-noir thriller film produced and directed by Peter Yates and written by Steve Tesich. It stars William Hurt, Sigourney Weaver, Christopher Plummer and James Woods. The story involves a television news reporter and a janitor who team up to solve a murder.

Plot

New York janitor Daryll Deever is an avid fan of television news reporter Tony Sokolow. A wealthy Vietnamese man suspected of criminal connections is murdered in Daryll's office building and Tony suspects Deever knows something about it.
She keeps after him for information, a pursuit Daryll allows because he is romantically interested in Tony, and a "cat and mouse" game ensues. This convinces the real killers that Daryll does know vital information about the murder, so he and Tony end up with their lives in danger over this false assumption.

Cast

The news equipment and promotional posters actually belonged to a real New York City television station, then-Metromedia owned independent WNEW-TV. Two then-station employees, news anchor John Roland and sportscaster Bill Mazer, made cameo appearances in the film. Sigourney Weaver, whose father Sylvester "Pat" Weaver had been a top network television executive, also worked for the station in order to gain experience. Both WNEW-TV and the film were under the corporate umbrella of 21st Century Fox until March 20, 2019, when Fox closed on its sale of its entertainment assets, including the film, to The Walt Disney Company.
Producer-director Peter Yates and screenwriter Steve Tesich had collaborated two years earlier on the film Breaking Away.
Hum To Mohabbat Karega, a 2000 Bollywood thriller-comedy film starring Karishma Kapoor and Bobby Deol was inspired by Eyewitness.