MovieChat Forums > Witness (1985) Discussion > book seemed a little young to be a capta...

book seemed a little young to be a captain

posted 15 years ago by reservoirdog1986
6 replies | jump to latest

just saying, especially when he was working regular cases

[–] 15 years ago

[deleted]

[–] Dennis_Cooper 15 years ago

He was definitely a Captain. His friend that helped him, played by Brent Jennings was a Sgt.

Ford was 43 when this was filmed, yeah he looked a lot younger (good for him), but 43 is a little young for a Police Captain in a major city, but not totally out of the question.

[–] 15 years ago

[deleted]

[–] Dennis_Cooper 15 years ago

Well the script is the evidence.

This is a link to the script. Go there and search for the term capt. or captain and you see Book referred to as both by other characters:

http://corky.net/scripts/witness.html

This IMDB page refers to the character as "Det. Capt. John Book"

http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0011671/

Good enough? If not, re-watch the film and pay close attention to what the other officers refer to Book as.

[–] tony_irwin50-1 12 years ago

WIthout actually knowing anything at all about how this stuff worked in Baltimore back then... I'm going to hazard a guess that he was a plain clothes Detective Captain rather than a "Precinct" Captain? So maybe he was running a central team that cleared serious cases (homicide?) across the city or something, rather than all the running a precinct kind of stuff?

I've no idea.

[–] movies789 11 years ago

His age was believable, but not his job function. A captain would have been largely desk-bound, running the operation as an executive. He would not have been running around the streets working cases, with a sergeant as a partner.