Reviews (6)

GUILTY PLEASURE
Bill Pullman stars as a cocky, self-assured federal judge-to-be who seems to get away with murder..or does he? Pullman takes his secretary out, and in a fit of drunken stupor, rapes her. She threatens to expose him; he decides to hire someone to kill her. Director Anthony Waller keeps the pace a little slow, but does manage some great camera angles and a few plot twists to save the day. Devon Sawa, Gabrielle Anwar, Joanne Whalley and Angela Featherstone provide good support and the ending is a real doozy!
A nice change of pace mystery.

Very Good
I think this film is one of the best films Devon Sawa has ever appeared in. I will admit the beginning is pretty boring, but as the film goes on, the better it gets. It's all about a lawyer, Callum Crane (Bill Pullman) who only cares about himself and his career and a young boy, Nathan Corrigan (Devon Sawa) who has just got out of jail and begins looking for his real father who just so happens to be Callum. On a one off date with his secretary, Sophie (Gabrielle Anwar), Callum gets very drunk, and rapes her. She then files a lawsuit against him after he fires her and gets promoted to be a judge. Callum hires Nathan after he saves him from being mugged by two thugs in a carpark to kill her. Nathan gets $5.000, a photo and an address of where Sophie lives, but throws it away, only to be found by his pal, Leo (Jaimz Woolvett) who owes money to someone. When he hears there's another $25.000 in the bag for killing Sophie, he sets out to find her...
Very good film which I recommend if you want to be in suspense!

Pullman pulls average movie into entertainment
Actor Bill Pullman (While You Were Sleeping) gets past the average acting of the younger stars in "The Guilty" to make a pretty good suspense/murder mystery. Too much airtime was given to the younger actors which is always a mistake when seasoned talent is also used. Afterall, it's Mr. Pullman's name and talent that makes viewers want to see the movie. It's murder with a twist and a moral: Don't get caught up with Generation X.

Indeed, a very good thriller !
you will be surprised with this low budget, low production company, movie. a nice, well written, and wonderful direction,
The Guilty is a good choice for rental, and even buying. Trust me...i trusted, and was not dissapointed.

Everyone loses
The only performance I enjoyed was from Devan Sawa (Final Destination). Anwar's character is first raped, then killed. Pullman's character is unsympathetic. Although I enjoyed the director teasing me with the prospect of Anwar undressing in her apartment. But definitely not a feel-good film. ... Read more

Amazon.com

On the strength of his Hitchcockian-thriller debut, Mute Witness, writer-director Anthony Waller was hired to direct this belated sequel to the 1981 horror comedy An American Werewolf in London, but lycanthropy in the City of Light just ain't what it used to be. The movie offers plenty of gruesome makeup and special wolf-transformation effects, and there are some effectively spooky moments in the plot involving an underground population of hungry Parisian werewolves. One of them is seductively played by Julie Delpy, who is rescued from attempted suicide by an American tourist (Tom Everett Scott, from That Thing You Do!) but ultimately can't hide her dual identity when darkness falls and the full moon shines. The movie begins well, but gradually succumbs to nonsense and mayhem, prompting critic Roger Ebert to observe that "here are people we don't care about, doing things they don't understand, in a movie without any rules." In other words, you'd have to be a die-hard horror buff to give this one the benefit of the doubt. --Jeff Shannon ... Read more

Reviews (77)

Sequel?
Wherever I look at reviews of this film on the internet, I always find one line 'Not as good as the original'. When compared to An American Werewolf In London, there are too few similarites to link the films for it to be a fair comparison. When you watch the film as a stand alone movie it's awesome. There are some great special effects (I particularly like the idea of two werewolves fighting), and a brilliant soundtrack which is also worth buying.

The plot however is nothing too spectacular, but it can be forgiven because the films content is so good, and it contains some great acting from Tom Everett Scott (That Thing You Do!, Boiler Room), Julie Delpy (ER), Vince Vieluf (Rat Race, Grind)and Pierre Cosso (Not a household name, but he certainly deserves to be).

Basically, three Amrerican friends visit Paris as part of their 'Daredevil Tour' and after sneaking to the top of the Eiffel Tower after hours, Andy (Everett Scott) stops the mysterious Serafine (Delpy) from commiting suicide. But when he tries to get involved with her he gets caught up in an underground group of werewolves lead by the sinister skinheaded Claude (Cosso).

Overall this film is unmissable if you're into this kind of thing, but it does have mixed opinions so you may want to look into it further before buying.

An American Classic
This film is a sequel to "An American Werewolf in London," a wonderful, but extremely thin movie. I think this one is infinitely better than the original. The bad guys are more charasmatic, the love story is deeper, and the main character has many more layers. The special effects are super and the script is well written. This is one of my favorite horror movies of all time.
Comedy in a horror is done wrong in a LOT of cases, but not in this case. The main character is haunted by the ripped up corses of the people he killed as a werewolf. One of them is a beautiful girl, and she's... So she spends her time on camera trying all kinds of ways to trick him into killing himself or to get him killed.
Good flick. Buy it today!

Good
I thought it was good, but I have never seen the first one(american werewolf in London) I dont see how you guys didnt like it. the acting was a little iffy but still a good movie. thought the fx was good, alittle romance, some comedy, some horror, but whateber

Horrible
This is a terrible movie and it's a shame it's even associated with one of my all time favorites, An American Werewolf in London. The animation here is novice, the acting is bad, the script is silly. Overdone, overproduced, overkill. Skip this one.

A pathetic attempt at a "Sequel"
This movie is pathetic. you could never compare this to the classic an american werewolf in london, it's just not possible. i only saw it once & that's enough for me. ... Read more

Reviews (15)

Superior suspense thriller
This film is a masterly piece of thriller cinema, unique for several reasons. First, it places a small, young American film crew in Moscow shooting a low-budget independent film--how many movies have that setting? Second, the protagonist, one of the crew, is a mute woman who serves various functions on the crew: props person, makeup artist, and others--and how many movies have that kind of protagonist? Third, it is the last appearance of Alec Guiness in a feature film.

The young woman accidentally witnesses a brutal murder by two Russian men of a Russian woman. The men hear something during the killing and chase her. What ensues is much more clever than a typical woman-in-jeopardy tale. The writer-director, Anthony Waller, does a superb job of throwing in unpredictable twists and turns at every bend in the road. The resolution is excellent and getting there is a whole lot of fun. It's great to see this top-notch suspense thriller finally coming out on DVD.

Upon release, this received excellent reviews from diverse publications. Highly recommended.

Be prepared to bite your nails to the quick
Mute Witness is a story that at times seems confusing, but the suspense is almost unbearable. The first half of the movie is just the best and is handled like an Alfred Hitchcock thriller with excellent camera work and mood. It centers around a mute make-up artist who is assisting a film crew shooting a horror movie in a Moscow studio. While there she is witness to a brutal murder of a prostitute at the hands of some who are making a snuff movie. From that moment, suspense abounds with each frame of the movie. There is some unevenness with the script, but overlook that because you are in for one hell of a rollercoaster thrill ride. This was never in wide release and that was a real shame. Originality never looked this good!

Very good and very bad
Starts off great but slowly dissolves into a jumbled mess. Genuinely unnerving and worth watching for about an hour. Then, for some reason, the movie goes in a completely different direction. It seems like the film changes directors and scripts right in the middle. Worth seeing especially if you plan to fall asleep or go out before the ending.

Starts well, ends badly.
For the better part of an hour, Mute Witness is a first-rate thriller. So good, in fact, it was quickly becoming one of my genre favorites. Good premise, great direction, mostly terrific acting, smart writing, this one had it all. That is until just a bit past the one-hour mark, when the film suddenly makes a mind-boggling idiotic decision to change the tone and approach of the material, and it all devolves into a cheesy mess that left a sour taste in my mouth. This is the perfect example of a would-be great film that's merely recommendable thanks to an awful finish.

Billy Hughes (Marina Zudina) is the make-up artist for a cheesy slasher flick being filmed in Russia. A quick intro shows us that she may be mute, but she's pretty good at her job, which she may have also gotten because her sister is married to the director. After shooting for the day is wrapped up, Billy stays behind and is accidentally locked inside the soundstage. Waiting for help to arrive, she stumbles upon two of the film's crew members shooting a porno film, which quickly becomes a snuff piece.

After a fairly amusing opening scene and an effective set-up of the characters, Mute Witness kicks into full throttle quickly. Immediately after Billy witnesses the murder, we get one of the more suspenseful extended setpieces I've ever seen. These fifteen minutes consist of Billy creeping around the soundstage, desperately trying to avoid those crew members she just witnessed. It's a genuine breathtaking, edge-of-the-seat sequence, quite possibly the movie's highlight.

But the fun's not over. A little over halfway through the picture, we get another great stalk-and-slash sequence inside Billy's apartment. You even get to see cutie Marina Zudina fully nude, in some of the more gratuitous bits of flesh baring I've seen in a while (to get the attention of a neighbor, she undoes her robe), not that I'm really complaining. Zudina is probably the best thing about the film, she's smart and likeable, a quick thinker who evades her attackers not because she's physically stronger or faster, but because she's smarter.

(spoilers) While I figured the film couldn't possibly keep the momentum up, I wasn't expecting such a sharp turn of events, either. The film suddenly goes from edgy thriller to a cheesy spy film, packed with silly and predictable double-crosses and plot twists. The simplicity and stark atmosphere of the first hour is gone. The number of villains is bloated from two scary individuals to what is apparently the entire Russian mafia.

The introduction of the undercover cop robs the movie of its key strength. The fun of the plot was watching Billy outthink and outsmart her attackers by herself. Bringing this guy into the mix shoves her into almost a supporting role and virtually reduces her to a mere sidekick/damsel in distress.

Possibly worst of all is the decision to place Billy's sister and her husband into the thick of the action. I don't think I've ever seen such an extreme case of two characters who I initially liked that come to annoy me so much by the climax. These two are made into bumbling fools, they've basically become the film's comic relief. Attempts at humor include them accidentally killing the bad guys, dropping bullets in crucial situations, and generally acting as clumsy as possible but still somehow not getting themselves killed in the process.

Director Anthony Waller had such a firm handle of the movie's pace and tone that I find it hard to believe he'd suddenly undo all his solid work in an instant. But the film's downward spiral is entirely his fault, the man wrote and directed the picture. He should have just stuck with what worked. But the first 2/3's are so much fun, it's worth recommending to thriller fans.

In Moscow No one Can Hear You Scream
As far as directorial debuts are concerned, Anthony Waller's Mute Witness is a very impressive start indeed. It is the type of film that thanks to the boom in DVD market, have been unearthed by the studios from their vault that contains dozens of excellent little films yet waiting to go digital.
A mute American film technician working on a small horror slasher in Moscow accidentally witnesses a 'snuff' movie..this of course leads to edge-of-your-seat chases that are very well filmed, and to the conspiracy behind this gruesome affair, at the centre of which reigns the greatest of them all, Sir Alec Guiness in his last film for cinema before his death (in 2000).
The plot is not flawless of course,(there are just a few, especially in the second half),but the brilliant directing and the development of the plot will more than compensate for that.
Think of Afraid of Dark (the hugely underrated and excellent Brit independant film about a nearly blind boy who also witnesses a murder), and Halloween 2 with its non stop chases down hospital corridors,and you will probably have an idea about Mute Witness. Having said that, it is still an original film (Moscow setting, 'Snuff' movies', Alec Guiness..), and not your average commercial suspense movie the genre and like of which litter the market.
Good performances by all, excellent direction,nail biting scenes, these are all good enough reasons to make Mute Witness a fresh little movie that can be watched and enjoyed again and again. ... Read more

Reviews (15)

Superior suspense thriller
This film is a masterly piece of thriller cinema, unique for several reasons. First, it places a small, young American film crew in Moscow shooting a low-budget independent film--how many movies have that setting? Second, the protagonist, one of the crew, is a mute woman who serves various functions on the crew: props person, makeup artist, and others--and how many movies have that kind of protagonist? Third, it is the last appearance of Alec Guiness in a feature film.

The young woman accidentally witnesses a brutal murder by two Russian men of a Russian woman. The men hear something during the killing and chase her. What ensues is much more clever than a typical woman-in-jeopardy tale. The writer-director, Anthony Waller, does a superb job of throwing in unpredictable twists and turns at every bend in the road. The resolution is excellent and getting there is a whole lot of fun. It's great to see this top-notch suspense thriller finally coming out on DVD.

Upon release, this received excellent reviews from diverse publications. Highly recommended.

Be prepared to bite your nails to the quick
Mute Witness is a story that at times seems confusing, but the suspense is almost unbearable. The first half of the movie is just the best and is handled like an Alfred Hitchcock thriller with excellent camera work and mood. It centers around a mute make-up artist who is assisting a film crew shooting a horror movie in a Moscow studio. While there she is witness to a brutal murder of a prostitute at the hands of some who are making a snuff movie. From that moment, suspense abounds with each frame of the movie. There is some unevenness with the script, but overlook that because you are in for one hell of a rollercoaster thrill ride. This was never in wide release and that was a real shame. Originality never looked this good!

Very good and very bad
Starts off great but slowly dissolves into a jumbled mess. Genuinely unnerving and worth watching for about an hour. Then, for some reason, the movie goes in a completely different direction. It seems like the film changes directors and scripts right in the middle. Worth seeing especially if you plan to fall asleep or go out before the ending.

Starts well, ends badly.
For the better part of an hour, Mute Witness is a first-rate thriller. So good, in fact, it was quickly becoming one of my genre favorites. Good premise, great direction, mostly terrific acting, smart writing, this one had it all. That is until just a bit past the one-hour mark, when the film suddenly makes a mind-boggling idiotic decision to change the tone and approach of the material, and it all devolves into a cheesy mess that left a sour taste in my mouth. This is the perfect example of a would-be great film that's merely recommendable thanks to an awful finish.

Billy Hughes (Marina Zudina) is the make-up artist for a cheesy slasher flick being filmed in Russia. A quick intro shows us that she may be mute, but she's pretty good at her job, which she may have also gotten because her sister is married to the director. After shooting for the day is wrapped up, Billy stays behind and is accidentally locked inside the soundstage. Waiting for help to arrive, she stumbles upon two of the film's crew members shooting a porno film, which quickly becomes a snuff piece.

After a fairly amusing opening scene and an effective set-up of the characters, Mute Witness kicks into full throttle quickly. Immediately after Billy witnesses the murder, we get one of the more suspenseful extended setpieces I've ever seen. These fifteen minutes consist of Billy creeping around the soundstage, desperately trying to avoid those crew members she just witnessed. It's a genuine breathtaking, edge-of-the-seat sequence, quite possibly the movie's highlight.

But the fun's not over. A little over halfway through the picture, we get another great stalk-and-slash sequence inside Billy's apartment. You even get to see cutie Marina Zudina fully nude, in some of the more gratuitous bits of flesh baring I've seen in a while (to get the attention of a neighbor, she undoes her robe), not that I'm really complaining. Zudina is probably the best thing about the film, she's smart and likeable, a quick thinker who evades her attackers not because she's physically stronger or faster, but because she's smarter.

(spoilers) While I figured the film couldn't possibly keep the momentum up, I wasn't expecting such a sharp turn of events, either. The film suddenly goes from edgy thriller to a cheesy spy film, packed with silly and predictable double-crosses and plot twists. The simplicity and stark atmosphere of the first hour is gone. The number of villains is bloated from two scary individuals to what is apparently the entire Russian mafia.

The introduction of the undercover cop robs the movie of its key strength. The fun of the plot was watching Billy outthink and outsmart her attackers by herself. Bringing this guy into the mix shoves her into almost a supporting role and virtually reduces her to a mere sidekick/damsel in distress.

Possibly worst of all is the decision to place Billy's sister and her husband into the thick of the action. I don't think I've ever seen such an extreme case of two characters who I initially liked that come to annoy me so much by the climax. These two are made into bumbling fools, they've basically become the film's comic relief. Attempts at humor include them accidentally killing the bad guys, dropping bullets in crucial situations, and generally acting as clumsy as possible but still somehow not getting themselves killed in the process.

Director Anthony Waller had such a firm handle of the movie's pace and tone that I find it hard to believe he'd suddenly undo all his solid work in an instant. But the film's downward spiral is entirely his fault, the man wrote and directed the picture. He should have just stuck with what worked. But the first 2/3's are so much fun, it's worth recommending to thriller fans.

In Moscow No one Can Hear You Scream
As far as directorial debuts are concerned, Anthony Waller's Mute Witness is a very impressive start indeed. It is the type of film that thanks to the boom in DVD market, have been unearthed by the studios from their vault that contains dozens of excellent little films yet waiting to go digital.
A mute American film technician working on a small horror slasher in Moscow accidentally witnesses a 'snuff' movie..this of course leads to edge-of-your-seat chases that are very well filmed, and to the conspiracy behind this gruesome affair, at the centre of which reigns the greatest of them all, Sir Alec Guiness in his last film for cinema before his death (in 2000).
The plot is not flawless of course,(there are just a few, especially in the second half),but the brilliant directing and the development of the plot will more than compensate for that.
Think of Afraid of Dark (the hugely underrated and excellent Brit independant film about a nearly blind boy who also witnesses a murder), and Halloween 2 with its non stop chases down hospital corridors,and you will probably have an idea about Mute Witness. Having said that, it is still an original film (Moscow setting, 'Snuff' movies', Alec Guiness..), and not your average commercial suspense movie the genre and like of which litter the market.
Good performances by all, excellent direction,nail biting scenes, these are all good enough reasons to make Mute Witness a fresh little movie that can be watched and enjoyed again and again. ... Read more