The Amish are a charming people, gentle oddities in today's techno world. They don't do handguns, cars, or telephones, and they're exceedingly clannish in their desire to keep out technology generally and outsiders in particular. The basis for Witness is an age-old fish-out-of-water story: a modern man trying to fit in with the quaint Amish in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Taken on that basis alone, Witness is a success; it's when the "real" world intrudes, with …showed first 75 words of 981 total…

…showed last 75 words of 981 total…makes it look like it's a huge fog (or smog) pit. The pacing, too, is weird; the film jerks from zero to sixty with no lead-in for the change in mood. It stops being exciting pretty early on, becoming instead just a boring and pretentious attempt to offer surprises where there really aren't any. (The Academy® graced Weir with a nomination as Best Director for this one, but I can't imagine why.)