Vantage Point Review
What you get from “Vantage Point” is a lot of vigorous actors – Dennis Quaid, William Hurt, Forest Whitaker, Sigourney Weaver et al, doing vigorous work in the service of a crafty, fast-moving story. Directed by Pete Travis and written by Barry L. Levy, it feels like an episode of ‘24’, lean and efficient but frustrating and unbelievable at the same time.
The Plot begins in Spain, where an anti-terrorism summit is about to be capped off by a speech from U.S. President. First our perspective is from the news control van, where the director and her crew fill us in on whatever back story we need – including that one of the Secret Service agents guarding The President is Thomas portrayed by Dennis Quaid, who took a bullet for the president last year and has been a little skittish ever since.
So it must be déjà vu for Thomas when The President’s speech is interrupted, rudely, by someone firing two shots into him. Panic fills the crowded plaza as Barnes and his fellow agent scramble to get the president to an ambulance and to find the shooter. Moments later, a bomb goes off – and the movie pauses, rewinds, and says “23 minutes earlier….”
The story begins anew, this time from the Agent’s perspective specifically, and ending once again with the bomb. Then we go back again and follow a Spanish cop, then an American tourist (Forest Whitaker), the President himself, a mysterious local, and so forth. Each retelling reveals new facts. Little things make you go “hmm…” at first (why can’t Barnes reach his command center on the radio?), then make sense later.
As is nearly always the case with these things, the conspiracy as it’s eventually explained is outrageously elaborate, the type of scheme that requires the evildoers to have some pretty serious fore knowledge and to do an awful lot of lucky guessing. The dialogue is often pedestrian, too, with lines that are either old clichés (a betrayed man crying out, “You used me!”) or laughably expository (“Your brother spoke
The Plot begins in Spain, where an anti-terrorism summit is about to be capped off by a speech from U.S. President. First our perspective is from the news control van, where the director and her crew fill us in on whatever back story we need – including that one of the Secret Service agents guarding The President is Thomas portrayed by Dennis Quaid, who took a bullet for the president last year and has been a little skittish ever since.
So it must be déjà vu for Thomas when The President’s speech is interrupted, rudely, by someone firing two shots into him. Panic fills the crowded plaza as Barnes and his fellow agent scramble to get the president to an ambulance and to find the shooter. Moments later, a bomb goes off – and the movie pauses, rewinds, and says “23 minutes earlier….”
The story begins anew, this time from the Agent’s perspective specifically, and ending once again with the bomb. Then we go back again and follow a Spanish cop, then an American tourist (Forest Whitaker), the President himself, a mysterious local, and so forth. Each retelling reveals new facts. Little things make you go “hmm…” at first (why can’t Barnes reach his command center on the radio?), then make sense later.
As is nearly always the case with these things, the conspiracy as it’s eventually explained is outrageously elaborate, the type of scheme that requires the evildoers to have some pretty serious fore knowledge and to do an awful lot of lucky guessing. The dialogue is often pedestrian, too, with lines that are either old clichés (a betrayed man crying out, “You used me!”) or laughably expository (“Your brother spoke