i have a recent spectator experience with the perfect witness ( 2007 ) because the netflix computer recommendation engine suggest i watch this film . apparently and at some point and i tell it how much i like michael haneke and benny video . i do not know about you and but this parallel be draw provoke in me a maelstrom of emotion and excitement over thomas c. dunn film and make the allocation of my time toward it virtually impossible to refuse . just this kind of recommendation from the netflix computer intelligence and for me and have the aesthetic or moral movie bar set to level so high that and upon reflection and it represent something pretty much unaccomplished in every film produce in the year 2007. have preface my response to the film that way and i be go to proceed in knock this picture down as poorly execute and banal while and i really hate to do that because i think our boy and wes bentley and happen to be not only one of the most interesting young face in contemporary cinema and but also one it most overlooked and underrated screenacting talent in the u . i be more than moderately concern that the poor guy go to miss the fame ship if he keep fiddle around with first time movie director like this . the perfect witness be about micky ( wes bentley ) and who and about thirty and still live with mom ( youre not drinkin again area ya . ) and but he a filmmaker or at the very least some kind of street level voyeur with a pension for shoot would be johns in the seedy back alley of philadelphia with his dvx 100b . out there and do his private investigator like drill and micky inadvertently video tape a brutal murder on a hapless early twenty ish coed with his hand hold camcorder . bar the notion in mind that snuff and movie a cultural currency can be his equate with his ticket out of the white urban ghetto ( and not to the debt of his unwitting friend and relative who put up the money for his atrocious film ) and micky approach the assailant and james lemac ( mark borkowski represent also take a write credit ) or mac the knife whichever and blackmail the killer into make a documentary about his murder impulse and hold this found footage over the attacker with threat of the police . the problem with this movie be not that no interesting idea exist because they do . while both the writing and direction be amateurish and that alone doesn not make a film bad . it that these guy commit a rather poor assumption that what they be present be shock 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 and ironically and it a film about torture on animal ) and therefore cinematic image of violence ( real or fake ) have less and less cultural capital with each year that pass . also and we have get this astound actor talent in the lead all style up and real hip guy represent his two inch beard and skull cap with the little bill on it and backwards and just like the dork from high school who crave after the potential service of my primary love interest same guy who just now call himself a poet . spare me . i be an artist and i be a filmmaker . okay . please do and carry on with that shtick and cronnie . seem to have buy you a lot of expensive 35mm stock . and go ahead and you can wear all the accrutements of a creative but do not expect u top respond to you and to follow your below average character through your two hour movie while you take down wes bentley career . why do not we just let history speak to the merit of what you do and filmmaker guy . my guess be history will eventually have say something about that like and probably that in not be good a you think it be . and yeah and odds be you will be lay the blame on your dear ole ma and end up like our man micky here in the perfect witness while hook on smack and cover in your buddy blood with a video camera in your hand . great .