Vantage Point

WARNING: This review will contain MASSIVE plot spoilers. Read at your own discretion.

The trailer to Vantage Point was interesting enough to grab my attention. The same event - an assassination plot against the President of the United States - seen from several different angles. I like films that go off on a story-telling tangent, Run, Lola, Run, Memento and Pulp Fiction remain some of my favourite movies of all time, so I was intruiged by how Vantage Point would pull it off. Truthfully, the film kick starts the precedings off well, but unfortunately it slowly descends into a pretty run of the mill thriller, and a not very good one at that.

The first 'angle' we see the plot from is behind the news camera, and the criminally underused talents of Sigeorney Weaver. It's perhaps one of the better angles - and director Pete Travis probably knew this - as we, much like we would have been at home watching something like this happen in real life, have no idea as to what is going on. The problem is, once the film 'rewinds' back to the beginning of events (which gets incredibly tiresome) the plot holes start to burrow themselves deeper.

But before I continue, a quick word on the trailer. If you watched it you'll have noticed two things. First, a Sniper Rifle is shown to be automatically operated and the President is shown to be alive (Dennis Quaid's secret service character exclaims 'you're supposed to be dead!', though that line isn't used in the film). Now, far be it from me to tell companies how to market their films, but for a plot that is supposed to be an enigma wrapped in a Chinese Box, it seems a little stupid.

The first plot hole was Matthew Fox (of Lost fame) character's sudden running towards a possible shooter telling Quaid that he'd 'take the hit' if it proved a red Herring. As soon as that happened I literally yelled 'He's a part of it!' Why? Because there was absolutely no room for any establishing bond between his character and Quaid's character. It was an amazing misstep by the writer and director, and was an all-too obvious plot 'development'.

Another problem is with Forest Whitaker's character, an American travelling Europe with an considerable list of achievements to his name. Being able to keep up with trained Secret Service and Spanish Police in a high speed pursuit amongst a massive crowd, meeting - and saving, twice - a young Spanish girl in said massive crowd, filming a shifty looking man in an area that's meant to be empty and catching a bomber on camera. I'm sorry, but it just seemed far to ridiculous to accept that he could have done all of that in the space of about 20 minutes despite being seemingly a typical civilian.

On the subject of the Secret Service, despite just finding out that a potential suspect was actually a Policeman who was protecting the Spanish Mayor, they opened fire on him with civilians en-masse running around in tight streets. Man, that's just stupid.

But the best (or worst, depending on how you look at it) comes in the last act. This is where we find out what the bad guys are up to. Or... not. Despite the films elaborate set-up: they knew the President was a double, they weren't going to kill him, they bomb his hide away and steal him in an Ambulance offing any 'loose ends' along the way, we never actually find out what the hell they wanted to achieve! Alongside this, is Quaid's realisation that Fox was a terrorist sympathiser. This really took the cake.

I'll set the scene. Quaid is talking to Fox on a mobile phone, while looking at footage inside the news crew's van. At the same time a camera man is filming Fox (in disguise) and Quaid, in the split second that he doesn't take his eyes off the screens, notices him talking on the phone in the same conversation he's having. "What did he see?" Weaver asks, and the answer was all belief being thoroughly suspended.

You may wonder why I've talked aplenty about the plot. Well, for a film that tried something so daring with story telling, it's kinda the focus point for any criticism, which Vantage Point provides with serious aplomb.

The film looks pretty nice - you can feel it when the bomb goes off, and the camera angles within the crowd scenes are used to great effect, but the final chase scene is a blatant Bourne rip-off, even down to the one-car-crushing-another-car that killed off Karl Urban's character in Supremecy. The acting in the film is pretty decent, Quaid, Weaver and Whitaker do what they can with a pisspoor script, but I'm not convinced that Fox is anything more than a television actor. William Hurt's turn as the President is fine, but I'm getting sick of these post-9/11 'let's not be like George Bush' US Presidents so frequently portrayed in modern cinema. Much like the visuals, the sound is largely meaty and works great.

Overall, as you can probably guess, I didn't like Vantage Point. It's plot is dire, the acting feels forced, and the ending - after all that build up - is shockingly bad. Avoid.

FINAL SCORE: 3/10

Wow, I thought it was better than 3. I'd give it a 5.

id give it a 5 because almost ALL of the loose ends were tied, but only one wasnt, still, it wasnt that good, it got annoyinlgy repetiitive over and friggin over.

Originally Posted by Alex6969

Wow, I thought it was better than 3. I'd give it a 5.

And I thought it was worse, I'd give it a 2.

That's why it's an opinion

Our opinions don't really matter here since we have unanimously decided this is a bad movie.

Alex, a unanimous vote means everyone voted the same, we obviously didn't.

Originally Posted by lskennedy

id give it a 5

Last time I checked 50% is failing.