The “stupid, overly violent” movie Harrison Ford hated until he overhauled it into his finest hour
As much as it would no doubt irritate him to hear it, Harrison Ford has always been viewed as a movie star first and an actor second, which is kind of his own fault for being so iconic for so long.
The percentage of actors who end up playing one of the most indelible roles in cinema history is minuscule, to put it lightly, but Ford went ahead and did it twice, cementing himself as a silver-screen legend by bringing both Han Solo and Indiana Jones to life.
Throw in Blade Runner‘s Rick Deckard, his two outings as Jack Ryan, and other blockbuster roles in the likes of Air Force One and The Fugitive, becoming one of the highest-paid and reliable big-budget leading men in the industry was always going to edge him into the star bracket at the expense of thespianism.
That doesn’t mean he’s a bad actor, though, far from it. Sure, he’s managed to go through a legendary career with only a solitary Academy Award nomination to his name to complement a quartet of Golden Globe nods, but it’s impossible to remain relevant in a cutthroat place like Hollywood for almost 50 years without having something intangible, indescribable, and unique about you.
By the mid-1980s, Ford was beginning to realise that he was in danger of being pigeonholed. Having made two Star Wars and two Indiana Jones movies consecutively, with Blade Runner sandwiched in the middle, he didn’t want to be known as someone who only headlines crowd-pleasing adventure flicks.
To that end, the screenplay for a project titled Called Home caught his eye, with the story revolving around a big-city cop who embeds himself with an Amish community to protect a mother and son from the potential repercussions of witnessing a murder. However, there was one major problem; he thought the writing was well below standard.
“It was a stupid, overly violent script,” he remarked. “I would never have done it if Peter Weir and I hadn’t been given the chance to rework it.” With a director and leading man in place, and the picture rebranded as Witness, the pair set to work, making it less of a pot-boiling action thriller and more of a character piece.
Ford wanted to make it to upend expectations and prove that he could carry a movie through his acting, rather than his star wattage, but he still recognised his baggage. “When you have more range, it’s far easier to seduce the audience, because you have more tools to work with,” he proffered. “Witness may seem like an advance in complexity in my film roles, but I have been able to do other complex parts as well. They just haven’t been as successful artistically or commercially as the other films.”
Much to his delight, this one was both. Weir’s modern noir recouped its budget almost ten times over at the box office, got Ford on the ‘Best Actor’ shortlist at the Oscars for the first and only time, won two prizes for ‘Best Original Screenplay’ and ‘Best Editing’, and earned another five nominations, including ‘Best Picture’ and ‘Best Director’, so that “stupid” script was clearly polished into something special.
