Vantage Point (Single-Disc Edition)

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Product Description
As the president arrives in salamanca gunshots ring out. An american tourist has captured footage of te would-be assassin on videotape & now as the stories of the other four witnesses unfold each piece of the puzzle falls into place. Only when all the stories are told will the shocking truth finally emerge. Studio: Sony Pictures Home Ent Release Date: 12/23/2008 Starring: Forest Whitaker William Hurt Run time: 90 minutes Rating: Pg13

Amazon.com
Vantage Point, which aspires to be a cunningly twisted thriller, comes equipped with plenty of hurtling action, handheld camerawork, what-was-that? editing, and a plot that has multiple, contradictory agendas writhing like a nest of snakes. It's all set a-boil within a few blocks of a town square in Spain where a U.S. President is targeted for assassination. Although the movie lasts 90 minutes, the events it depicts are mostly over with in a quarter-hour or so--but seen, rewound, and reseen from half a dozen different (you guessed it) vantage points. The first line in the credits reads "Original Film," apparently the name of the production company. "Gimmick Movie" would be more accurate; the opening reel, effectively jolting, affords an initial overview of the events through the eyes, lenses, monitors, and dueling sensibilities of a TV news producer (Sigourney Weaver), her activist-minded reporter (Zoe Saldana) and crew. Everybody's in Salamanca (actually, Mexico City) for the start of an international conference to reaffirm Arab-Western commitment to the fight against terrorism. Terrorism, of course, sees this as an ideal moment to break out. As gunshots and explosions reduce everything to chaos, the clock is reset to zero and we proceed to revisit the scene as experienced by several Secret Service agents (namely Dennis Quaid and Matthew Fox), an American tourist with camcorder (Forest Whitaker), sundry locals--including three who may be caught up in a love triangle or a conspiracy or both--and even the President himself (William Hurt).

For a while, this is mildly diverting: that guy, or that gesture, so sinister when glimpsed across the plaza in one run-through, now appears harmless in close-up--or vice versa. But there's no real ambiguity (so stop with the careless comparisons to Kurosawa's Rashomon)--this is a shell game in which the peas aren't worth tracking. Despite decent actors, the characters might as well be holograms (although poor Forest Whitaker is saddled with "motivation" of surpassing sappiness), and the casting telegraphs several twists: one redoubtable good guy practically gives a wink-wink, nudge-nudge that he's really bad, etc. The movie declines to specify which nutjob philosophy the terrorists espouse, and their numbers are multi-ethnic. There's also a laborious suggestion that they have bloodthirsty, reactionary counterparts among the President's inner circle, which perhaps qualifies as redeeming socio-political comment and prompts a meaningless declaration of deep meaning from the Prez. The whole megilleh finally comes down to an extended car chase through impassably claustrophobic streets that would mark a lurch into unintentional self-parody--if only that point hadn't been passed a couple of rewinds earlier. --Richard T. Jameson

Stills from Vantage Point (click for larger image)

Customer Reviews: Read 120 more reviews...

3 out of 5 stars

Vantage Point - Gets Better Towards the End, Worth Watching! March 8, 2008
24 out of 26 found this review helpful

"Vantage Point" is a good action drama that you can predict pretty well from the trailer. It is based on a concept that has been done many times before, that of telling the same story from multiple points of view. Fans of "24" will get a strong sense of deja vu 24 - Season 1 (Slim - Pack). Yet the core story is interesting. The action sequences and great camera work make this a movie worth watching. Good acting and a strong finish help to overcome some loose ends and production errors.

The President of the United States (William Hurt), or POTUS as referred to by the secret service, is the target of a group of terrorists whose objectives are never revealed to us. While overseas to attend an anti-terrorism summit in Spain, he is shot. Or is he?

Dennis Quaid and Mathew Fox (of "Lost" fame Lost - The Complete First Season) play secret service agents there to protect the President. After multiple attacks occur after the president is shot, they scramble to try to respond and find the shooter. It is very difficult to tell which attacks are meant to kill and which are meant to divert attention away from the villains.

Quaid takes advantage of Forest Whitaker's camcorder film and the media's tapes to piece together the story. As each of the characters is swung into action, we get to see their individual struggles to cope with chaos and how their stories are interconnected.

Perhaps in an homage to "24," after each character's scene finishes it 'rewinds' to the beginning to give us the next character's 'vantage point.' This gets old fast. After a while, these vantage points seem to disintegrate into one another and overlap more and more. In fact, this is one story where the effect seems to have taken away from the story.

The action sequences are very strong, and even though there's a lot of hand held camera work they get enough steady shots to make the chase scenes watchable. Most notable is a car chase scene that is bound to draw comparisons to Ronin Ronin, The Bourne Identity The Bourne Identity (Widescreen Extended Edition), The Italian Job The Italian Job (Special Collector's Edition) and other recent car chase movies. Putting together a sequence like that is very difficult, and I can't wait for the DVD to see how they did it. What can I say, I'm a sucker for a good car chase.

The pacing of the movie is good and especially improves once we get to the last few vantage points. The score is excellent and blends well with the action sequences. We are purposely left without reasons why this group is after the president.

There are some technical things that are off in the movie. Anybody who has ever been to Spain will get that uneasy feeling. Once you see the Mexican extras and hear them speak a very Central American Spanish it becomes clear they are in Mexico, not Spain. They try to use a few Spanish actors, but it's not enough to feel like Spain.

Some parts of the dialogue seem overly preachy. Still, this movie does effectively portray how difficult security planning is in a world where government security tactics are public knowledge. The story probably would have been more profound and meaningful with a traditional plot-line, which it turns into at the end anyway.

This movie is worth watching and improves a lot towards the end. You just have to get past several very annoying rewind sequences and plenty of early repetition.

Enjoy!

4 out of 5 stars

"Do you see what I see?" March 1, 2008
11 out of 16 found this review helpful

US President Ashton (Hurt) is set to attend an anti-terrorist conference in Salmanca, Spain. Agent Thomas Barnes (Quaid) is back on duty after being shot defending the President from an attempted assassination.

Howard Lewis (Whitaker) is on vacation in Spain and filming the conference for his family back home. He sees movement in a window behind the President and catches the assassin on tape.

The rest of the film is from 8 separate vantage points and tells the tale of the attempted assassination and kidnapping of the US President by terrorists. The action's fast and the scene 'rewinds' each time for a new 'vantage point.'

Yes, the concept's been done before, but I have to get a nod to a stellar cast. Hurt, Quaid, Whitaker all had me lost in their personal stories and rooting for the 'good guys.'

WARNING: Rewinds may be a problem for folks with vertigo, migraines or seizures. I have vertigo and offer this warning to others. Note--for some reason, this film panned out well enough that I wasn't dizzy or nauseated afterwards. IMHO, that's a job well done for the cinematographer.

3 out of 5 stars

3 Stars and I am being kind. April 8, 2008
10 out of 11 found this review helpful

This film just follows on with the trend of every other post 9/11 terrorist movie. This one going for a slight twist when a terrorist attack is committed against the president of the United States in Spain is seen through various angles and peoples perspectives.

Problem with this film is as I have pointed out its been done a million times before and is just frankly getting boring now (Imagine watching 24 with even less interest and you get the idea) We have the disgruntled secret serviceman who has previously "took a bullet" for the president but never quite recovered, family man American on holiday who when not filming the whole event gets on with the locals and even saves a few of them, hard sell camera crew (Changed CNN to GNN)they even seemed to pick the darkest Spanish people to be as support actors (Was that just to emphasise to the American audience that this was Spain?)

So we have unknown terrorist group whose goal is never quite explained (Though they do appear to have an Arabic name and a base in "friendly" Morocco. I guess just giving us that was enough to convince us of their "badness") Plan an elaborate terrorist attack (If these people do have this kind of planning then God help us all!) with a multi national group with an end aim that is just as unexplained as the actual goals of the organisation itself. Running chase, so called twist to the tale, not so subtle hints as to who the bad guys are and you pretty much have the plot (Not that there is much of one) We are even given a moving speech from the president who refuses to retaliate to the bomb attack with a military strike because that would be "Just what these people want" and encourages his advisers to stick with the conference (Was this supposed to be some kind of "What could have been" Post 9/11) Either way it becomes a mute point when his advisers get gunned down 2 seconds later.

Difficult to have anything positive to say about this film. Instantly forgettable.

1 out of 5 stars

What Was That Pill? July 2, 2008
8 out of 8 found this review helpful

Is there somewhere I can apply to get the time I spent watching this movie refunded to me? It started out merely predictable, but quickly became unbelievable, and eventually escalated into eye-popping nonsense. If you enjoy this, you should stick with TV movies. In terms of redeeming factors, there are some truly hilarious moments, such as the car chase where Dennis Quaid succeeds in driving one-handed through miles of narrow streets at high speeds while making non-stop cell phone calls and surviving, unscathed, some nasty crashes. Apparently, driving and talking on a cell phone is safer than we've been led to believe. We can only hope our actual Secret Service agents are one tenth as competent (and lucky!) as Quaid. And, we can only hope that someday, our actual President is as worthy of the effort as the mythical one in this story. By the end, I was slack-jawed in amazement at what passes for entertainment these days. I wish this movie had been made by Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez, or anyone else, with at least one foot in the real world. No such luck... but in the end, one dollop of entertainment was discovered, as I howled my way through the apparently sincere comments by the cast and filmmakers in the special features. If you finish this dog with a straight face, you must be on some of that stuff that Quaid took to steady his nerves... what was it? Maybe I needed some to sit through this movie.

1 out of 5 stars

A Story So Preposterous and Campy I Started Laughing! March 6, 2008
5 out of 8 found this review helpful

Vantage Point is a camp delight! By the film's end I was waiting for our shaky-handed, Secret Service hero to rip-off his shirt to expose a big Superman letter "S" on his chest! Terrorists who blithely slaughter innocent people left and right will throw everything out the window over a single child! You know a bomb has just been planted but you keep standing around talking. A bomb goes off right under your nose with loads of people lying dead and wounded but our various heroes barely have a scratch except for their tattered clothes! The Secret Service is totally inept except for one guy with shaky hands! I think you get the picture! But the best scene is one of the last. Its when the President snaps awake at just the right moment, after just being drugged, and kloncks the bad guy over the heads with a piece of metal all because the villains conveniently failed to strap him down properly! But just moments earlier taking out a score of Secret Service agents was a walk in the park!

I did find the 'Groundhog Day' technique of repeating the same day over, and over again, but from different perspectives, to be a very interesting approach to story telling. Too bad it was wasted on such a unbelievably ridiculous story! It's as if Hollywood's main concern is satisfying it's teenage market segment over all others. I'm not a teenager and I go to the movies virtually every week! What about the adult segment of your market? Don't we count for anything?

This film is trying terribly hard to be a frantic 'French Connection' type movie without worrying much about the story. If all you want is dumbed-down, murder and mayhem, a sort of terrorist war-porn flick, then Vantage Point is for you! But if a decent story is an important ingredient in your recipe for time well spent, then I humbly suggest renting something that has stood the test of time, like the French Connection, instead!

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