James Horak Like Bordertown, I Witness exposes another underbelly of corporate internationalism seeking windfall profits by escaping fair trade practices, fair wages and scrutiny by government agencies created to protect environmental concerns. Hiding behind Mexico's drug wars, the new gangsters of corporate thuggery use criminal means to cloak the cost of dumping toxic chemical waste upon the unsuspecting in a country where a bribe can cover any crime, no matter the number and innocence of victims. And like Bordertown, I Witness takes with fiction the excursions into truth today's mess media would dare not touch upon. Jeff Daniels and James Spader typically provide glowing performances while Clifton Collier Jr's performance places as something grand to see. Rowdy Harrington's direction is professionally able and the camera work is exceptional. Writers Colin Greene and Robert Ozn are to be commended. A film whose time is come and whose value exceeds entertainment, this should have been required viewing by Congress before passing on trade agreements that have undermined the quality of life on both sides of the border. JCH

mjohnson64064 In Tijuana, dozens of innocent people are murdered, and the police are bent on blaming the local drug cartel. A human rights activist, played by Jeff Daniels, originally sent to monitor a union vote at an American-owned company, begins investigating the murders. He soon learns that the drug lord is a harmless, lovable fuzzball trying to earn an honest living. Meanwhile, the American company, trying to keep their business from becoming unionized, ends up at the center of the investigation in typical Hollywood sucker-punch style.Yes, it's an interesting plot, but Hollywood is really good at inserting its Anti-American bias into an otherwise perfectly good modern murder mystery.

fgh I won't write about the contents, others did that already - I'll write about the setting of the movie.I was very pleased to find a US movie dealing with multinational corporations, unions, murder, police crime and environmental pollution in the form of a crime mystery that really works. This, I mainly attribute to the well balanced way everything was handled: Multinational corporations pay very low wages, but on the other hand, without them there might be even less jobs in developing countries. Trade unions help workers to more rights and higher wages, but on the other hand the multinationals just move on when the wages rise, etc. pp. OK, drug lords and crime play a big part in this movie, too - but I am glad these things are not depicted as being cool or glitzy, like in other movies. What I don't understand is the IMDb label 'Thriller' - the German word 'Krimi' (crime movie) seems to fit better. And like some German crime movies, the crime is only used as a vehicle for all the other trials and tribulations happening to the characters.Watching all the street scenes and how people like the human rights guy might actual live in Mexican cities (where being abducted seems to be an almost daily experience) was much more believable and 'real' like, for instance, in 'Man on Fire'. Thumbs up for that.To find such a multi-layered view of things makes watching this movie a pleasure - although the topic is very sad. Unfortunately this was a straight to pay TV/video release in Germany, so not many people will have the chance to watch it.The only thing I missed was a real motive for the one shown as being responsible in the end. Maybe watching it a second time might help here.

Daniela Castilho All bad things that happens in Latin America is because the drugs dealers right? Wrong. This is what this movie is about. As a Latin American I saw a different point of view at this movie, something that is rare when the subject are "the third world countries". Usually Hollywood shows Latin America as poor, full of drug dealers, violence and ignorance. This movie shows the poor Latin America but starts to escape of stereotypes during the story, at certain point we discover that was not the drug cartel the responsible for the murderers but the police, what is a big difference compared with other movies that uses the same subject. This is what I most like in this movie, it shows that not everything that causes problems to the "third world" comes from drugs, some of the problems are sometimes caused by the big non-Latin American corporations and corrupted police.