Vantage Point (**½)
Starring: Dennis Quaid, Matthew Fox, Sigourney Weaver, Forest Whitaker, William Hurt
Seen: April 5th 2008
**½ Out of ****
Set in Salamanca, Spain, this exciting thriller tells the story of the assassination of the American President, Henry Ashton (Hurt) at an anti-terrorism summit, told from 6 different perspectives, in the vein of the 1950 Akira Kurosawa film Rashomon, where this type of filmmaking was pioneered. I haven’t seen Rashomon, but this then definitely makes me want to. I did find this film very entertaining though.
The same story gets told 6 times, literally the same 10-15 minutes out of the different perspectives of 6 characters, unveiling subtle to more blatantly obvious plot points with each iteration, without really surprising too much at any time. The first perspective is out of the viewpoint of Rex Brooks (Weaver), a news producer – seeing perhaps the least of what happens while shacked up in her news van. And all of a sudden we have a screen freeze, things rewind back to just before events transpire, and the second rerun begins, this time from two Secret Service Agents, Thomas Barnes (Quaid) and Kent Taylor (Fox). The same happens again for Enrique, a Spanish national, Howard Lewis (Whitaker), an American tourist filming the whole ordeal on handheld camera, the president himself, and finally the terrorists.
I found this massively intriguing, but to my great detriment there were some fools in the cinema who couldn’t keep their exasperation of this way of storytelling to themselves. If you don’t like it, leave the cinema; don’t ruin other filmgoers’ experience. The action is fast paced and presented in the way of the Bourne trilogy, and some sequences are filmed brilliantly from different perspectives – this must have been a massive coordination effort. As could be expected, very little is presented along the lines of character development, with Quaid’s character really being the only one going through any emotional turmoil, being a Secret Service agent returning to active duty after being shot in the line of duty.
This is a fun and fast paced popcorn action thriller, with a slightly disappointing conclusion. I look forward to watching it again someday.
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