Metacritic reviews

This is, first of all, an electrifying and poignant love story....And it is also one hell of a thriller.

Arguably Harrison Ford’s finest performance, and one of the strongest thrillers to emerge from the heady gloss of the ‘80s, this is director Peter Weir at his most adept.

Sure-footed thriller, beautifully photographed, with Ford's best performance thus far.

Witness states its position about clashing cultures with eloquence.

Witness is satisfying on so many levels it stands with "Cabaret" and "The Godfather II" as an example of how a director in love with his medium can redeem its mainstream cliches. [07 Feb 1985]

Peter Weir, the standard-bearer of the Australian Tradition of Quality, is on hand to smother all the contrivances in his solemn, academic style, and the result is a moderately effective, highly affected thriller.

It's not really awful, but it's not much fun. It's pretty to look at and it contains a number of good performances, but there is something exhausting about its neat balancing of opposing manners and values.

Witness, which is one of the most originally conceived and gracefully made suspense dramas of recent years, to work into edgy juxtaposition the representatives of two subcultures that are ordinarily mutually exclusive.

Witness is at times a gentle, affecting story of star-crossed lovers limited within the fascinating Amish community. Too often, however, this fragile romance is crushed by a thoroughly absurd shoot-em-up, like ketchup poured over a delicate Pennsylvania Dutch dinner.

Along with some creaky plot mechanics in the last third of the story, this reduces the film to ordinary dimensions - a sharp but no longer resonant show.