TV Review : Pressure Is on ‘Witness’ From Killers and the Law

The Manhattan meat market district is an apt metaphor for the decent working stiff who becomes hamburger patty for hungry U.S. Feds in tonight’s “Perfect Witness� (HBO, 8 p.m.).

In this case, the quintessential little guy (blue-collar Aidan Quinn) witnesses a contract killing in a bar (a brutal but effective scene featuring a grinning hit man played by David Cumming). Unlike the other patrons, our reluctant hero does the right thing and identifies the killer.

But when Quinn’s family is threatened, that’s it for public duty. He changes his mind and refuses to cooperate with a federal grand jury investigating extortion in the butcher business. And the outraged, media-conscious U.S. attorney (a blustery, solid performance by Brian Dennehy) throws him in the slammer for contempt. His fellow attorney (a blond Stockard Channing, who looks uncomfortable in the role) objects to no avail.

The story is allegedly based on a newspaper series in Gotham about perfect eyewitnesses who pay dearly for their noble deeds. The moral is disheartening: Keep your mouth shut.

The writers, Terry Curtis Fox and Ron Hutchinson, strive to play both ends of the moral dilemma with a courtroom conclusion that mixes individual valor with legal deception and cynicism. The government comes off little better than the mob.

At one point, Dennehy’s federal attorney protests that “government is force! It’s not reason. It’s not laws. It’s force--George Washington said that.� Imagine hearing those lines in a movie during the old blacklist days. The writers’ careers would be over.

Robert Mandel’s direction doesn’t always clearly negotiate the plot convolutions. This 2-hour movie would race better with 30 minutes lopped off. But the point about pressure on the hero to overlook corruption because, as the killer’s father tells the perfect eyewitness, “it’s neighborhood,� is tellingly made.