Starring Harrison Ford, its plot focuses on a police detective protecting an Amish woman and her son, who becomes a target after he witnesses a brutal murder in a Philadelphia railway station.

At the 58th Academy Awards, it earned eight nominations, including Best Picture and Best Actor for Ford, winning Best Original Screenplay and Best Film Editing.

An Amish community outside Lancaster, Pennsylvania, attends the funeral of Jacob Lapp, leaving behind his wife, Rachel, and eight-year-old son, Samuel.

While at the 30th Street Station waiting for a connecting train, Samuel goes into the men's room and witnesses the murder of undercover police officer Detective Ian Zenovich.

Samuel then sees a newspaper clipping in a trophy case of narcotics officer Lieutenant James McFee and points him out to Book as the murderer.

Before he drives off, Eli wishes John well by saying, "You be careful out there among them English.” As per film's end credits:[a] In his book The Amish in the American Imagination (2001), scholar David Weaver-Zercher notes that Witness is primarily concerned with the intersection of contrasting cultures, a recurring theme in several of Weir's films, including The Last Wave (1977) and The Year of Living Dangerously (1982).

[4] Producer Edward S. Feldman, who was in a "first-look" development deal with 20th Century Fox at the time, first received the screenplay for Witness in 1983.

Originally titled Called Home, which is the Amish term for death, it ran for 182 pages, the equivalent of three hours of screen time.

The script, which had been circulating in Hollywood for several years, began with an idea by novelist Pamela Wallace for a novel about an Amish woman who witnesses a murder in Los Angeles.

Earl W. Wallace, who wrote for the television Western "How the West was Won" recalled an episode with a similar plot and contacted its writer, William Kelley.

[7] Feldman sent the screenplay to Harrison Ford's agent Phil Gersh, who contacted the producer four days later and advised him his client was willing to commit to the film.

Feldman's first choice of director was Peter Weir, but he was involved in preproduction work for The Mosquito Coast and passed on the project.

McGillis did research by moving in with an Amish widow and her seven children, learning how to milk cows and practicing their Pennsylvania German dialect.

Weir drew attention to the paintings of Johannes Vermeer, which were used as inspiration for the lighting and composition of the film, especially in the scenes where John Book is recovering from a gunshot wound in Rachel's house.

[15] During the set-up and rehearsal of each scene, as well as during dailies, Weir would play music to set the mood, with the idea that it prevented the actors from thinking too much and let them listen to their other instincts.

The barn-raising scene was only a short paragraph in the script, but Weir thought it was important to highlight that aspect of Amish community life.

The studio executives were concerned that the audience would not understand the conclusion, and tried to convince him otherwise, but Weir insisted that the characters' emotions could be expressed only with visuals.

The site's critics consensus states: "A wonderfully entertaining thriller within an unusual setting, with Harrison Ford delivering a surprisingly emotive and sympathetic performance.

[25] Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times rated the film four out of four stars, calling it: [F]irst of all, an electrifying and poignant love story.

Only then is it a thriller—one that Alfred Hitchcock would have been proud to make... We have lately been getting so many pallid, bloodless little movies—mostly recycled teenage exploitation films made by ambitious young stylists without a thought in their heads—that Witness arrives like a fresh new day.

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... One might be made to care about all this if the direction by the talented Australian film maker, Peter Weir... were less perfunctory and if the screenplay... did not seem so strangely familiar.

"[28] Time Out New York observed, "Powerful, assured, full of beautiful imagery and thankfully devoid of easy moralizing, it also offers a performance of surprising skill and sensitivity from Ford.

After the movie was completed, Pennsylvania governor Dick Thornburgh agreed not to promote Amish communities as future film sites.

A similar concern was voiced within the movie itself, where Rachel tells a recovering Book that tourists often consider her fellow Amish something to stare at, with some even being so rude as to trespass on their private property.

The Amish farmers were present as the third side in perhaps its most elemental form, seemingly doing nothing, but in fact playing the critical role of Witness.