scoup Good serial killer flick.Production values were not stellar, but it might have been the director's aim to go "real" looking.Both male leads were good. The beginning was somewhat slow and you have to suspend some reality to imagine that a serial killer would just sit there and have a conversation.What keeps the movie going is the viewer's desire to see who's going to turn on the other first. There are several plot twists which were interesting.Ending - I liked.If you are looking for an above average horror movie take a peek.

jkhuysmans0 I had a recent spectator experience with The Perfect Witness (2007) because the NetFlix computer recommendation engine suggested I watch this film. Apparently, at some point, I told it how much I liked Michael Haneke's, Benny's Video. I don't know about you, but this parallel being drawn provoked in me a maelstrom of emotion and excitement over Thomas C. Dunn's film and made the allocation of my time toward it virtually impossible to refuse. Just this kind of recommendation from the NetFlix computer intelligence, for me, had the aesthetic/moral movie bar set to level so high that, upon reflection, it represented something pretty much unaccomplished in every film produced in the year 2007.Having prefaced my response to the film that way, I'm going to proceed in knocking this picture down as poorly executed and banal; and I really hate to do that because I think our boy, Wes Bentley, happens to be not only one of the most interesting young faces in contemporary cinema, but also one its most overlooked and underrated screenacting talents in the US. I'm more than moderately concerned that the poor guy's going to miss the fame ship if he keeps fiddling around with first time movie directors like this.The Perfect Witness is about Micky (Wes Bentley), who, about thirty, still lives with Mom ("You're not drinkin' again area ya's?"), but he's a "filmmaker" or at the very least some kind of street-level voyeur with a pension for shooting would-be Johns in the seedy back alleys of Philadelphia with his DVX 100B. Out there, doing his private investigator-like drills, Micky "inadvertently" video-tapes a brutal murder on a hapless early-twenty-ish coed with his hand held camcorder. Baring the notion in mind that snuff and movies as cultural currency can be his equated with his ticket out of the white urban ghetto (and not to the debts of his unwitting friends and relatives who put up the money for his atrocious films), Micky approaches the assailant, James LeMac (Mark Borkowski: also takes a writing credit) or "Mac the Knife" –whichever- and blackmails the killer into making a documentary about his murder impulses, holding this found footage over the attacker with threats of the police.The problem with this movie is not that no interesting ideas exist because they do. While both the writing and direction are amateurish, that alone doesn't make a film bad. It's that these guys commit a rather poor assumption that what they are presenting is shocking in the context of a culture in which just about any person in the free world with access to a private computer can log-on to the web and catch the veracity of the action of a beheading on their little Mac or PC. No film relies on shock value alone any more (unless of course, ironically, it's a film about torture on animals) and therefore cinematic images of violence (real or fake) have less and less cultural capital with each year that passes. Also, we've got this astounding actor-talent in the lead all styled-up, real hip guy: his two inch beard and skull cap with the little bill on it, backwards, just like the dork from high school who craved after the potential services of my primary love interest –same guy who just now calls himself a "poet."Spare me. "I'm an artist," "I'm a filmmaker." Okay. Please do, carry on with that shtick, Cronnie. Seems to have bought you a lot of expensive 35mm stock. And go ahead, you can wear all the accrutements of a "creative" but don't expect us top respond to you, to follow your below average character through your two hour movie while you take down Wes Bentley's career. Why don't we just let history speak to the merits of what you do, filmmaker guy. My guess is history will eventually have say something about that –like, probably that's in not is good as you think it is. And yeah, odds are you'll be laying the blame on your dear ole ma, end up like our man Micky here in The Perfect Witness; hooked on smack and covered in your buddy's blood with a video camera in your hand. Great.

abigailsea11 Wow!!! This is what Indie films should be. I didn't know what to expect going in but was totally on the edge of my seat the whole way through! It was sort of disturbing but in a very real, can't look away, can't wait for what will happen next sense. The two main characters, Mickey (Wes Bentley) and James Lemac (newcomer Mark Borkowski) are locked in a psychological cat and mouse as Mickey, a documentary filmmaker, hatches a crazy plan to blackmail and film James, a serial killer, for just a few days and then turn him into the police. One of the coolest things is that we don't really see the police in this film. We know they must be out there searching but we stay with the two main characters and just keep delving deeper and deeper into their psychology, morality and obsession. Every time you think you get to breathe, the air gets sucked right back out of you and there's a new crazy plot twist. The acting was really subtle (with Borkowski capable of erupting at a moment's notice) and the dark, edgy feel to the cinematography/directing made it really stand out as a risk-taking, no holds barred independent film. One particular murder scene was one of the most emotionally disturbing and visceral 5 minutes I've watched in a long time...wouldn't be surprised if this was a love/hate film for people because it gets under your skin and takes so many chances but I'm firmly on the side of loving it! It was clear the filmmakers wanted to be relentless with their audience so be prepared...

aliasme Having just wasted a couple of hours watching this and for 80% of that time in complete disbelief, I can give this garbage the turkey of the year award, no problem. To say the plot was unbelievable is some big understatement. Frankly I am lost for words to describe this utter tripe. Not only are the characters completely and utterly without any semblance of originality (this sort of stuff has been done much better in dozens of 'serial killer flicks')but the acting was dire. For those who pay to see this, I hope you get your money back, for those who were paid to do this, I hope you GIVE your money back. Believe me folks there are many new releases out there that are much, much better. Go see.