From my vantage point, this movie's terrible.
Vantage Point is a fairly standard political thriller told in a fairly novel fashion. The story begins with a pivotal event -- an attempted Presidential assassination -- and revisits it from several different perspectives, each time revealing a crucial detail designed to help move the plot along. The idea doesn't lack for promise -- sure, the Rashomon thing's been done before, but mostly in independent flicks made by would-be auters, not in big budget, effects-heavy studio action flicks.
Dennis Quaid stars as a Secret Service agent returning to duty after a year spent recovering from wounds sustained during a previous attempt on the President (played by William Hurt). And wouldn't you know it, on his first day back on the job those pesky terrorists strike again. This time they succeed, putting two bullets in the President's chest during an appearance at a peace conference in Spain. Two powerful bomb blasts follow, plunging the scene into utter chaos.
From there, Vantage Point essentially becomes a murder mystery, but not before the aforementioned assassination attempt is replayed. And replayed again. And again. And...again. In addition to Quaid's version of the event, we see it from the viewpoint of a TV news producer (Sigourney Weaver), an American tourist (Forest Whitaker), a terrorist, local cop, a janitor, a pony, a housecat and a discarded gum wrapper. After each increasingly annoying replay, the clock is wound back and a time stamp appears in the lower left corner -- in 24-esque fashion -- to remind us that we're starting over. It's a severe, achingly tedious case of Rashomon overkill.
When Vantage Point finally dispenses with the overused gimmick and the stalled plot begins moving again-- almost an hour into the film -- it becomes genuinely interesting, but only for a brief while before a series of increasingly ridiculous plot twists send the movie overboard. Of course, describing said ridiculous plot twists would necessitate revealing some pretty gnarly spoilers, and I wouldn't dream of depriving you of the same experience that I enjoyed. Call me a sadist.
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