Vantage Point

This is a movie that owes everything to the trailer. You know the trailer; the one that has been airing for about a year now as this movie toiled in release date hell. The trailer with all kinds of action and speedy action sequences. The trailer that made this movie appear to be one high octane action thriller. The trailer that probably showed too much because how much cooler would it have been if we didn't know it was a fake President who was killed. Anyway, I went to see this movie based on the strong trailer and the pretty strong cast, but I was not sure exactly how I would feel about it.

The story itself is very straight forward- The President of the United States is in Spain for an Anti-Terrorism convention thing and he is assassinated. That is the movie in a nutshell. The movie is essentially the same scene told 8 different times before revving up to an unbelievably convenient and highly coincidental climax. The first "Vantage Point" (known from now on as VP)takes place in a news van as a Global News Network covers the Presidential address. Sigourney Weaver is the head newswoman and we merely see what we would see if we were watching this event on television. The second VP is Dennis Quaid's Secret Service officer serving his first mission since taking a bullet for The President 6 months ago. We see him in the before the gun shots and briefly after. The third VP is The President; the Fourth is Forrest Whitaker who is a random American tourist and the final VP follows the 4 or 5 terrorists responsible for the assassination.

I probably make it sound like I did not enjoy this movie, but I did. I found it to be fast paced and action packed if incredibly ill conceived and ridiculously impossible. The plot holes are massively big and at times I found myself trying to re-write the script to it would make sense in my brain that I was actually enjoying the film. I enjoyed the gimmick of showing the same set of events 5 or 6 different ways as each VP gave us a little more insight to the bigger picture and I liked that most of the VPs ended in the same area so when the action picked up it was a non stop thrill ride until the end. Matthew Fox continues to prove that he is at his best on television because he is out of his league against the everyman Quaid and of course Forrest Whitaker is one of those actors who fully inhabits a role to the point where you almost forget you are watching Forrest Whitaker. But, I could not stop wondering how all of these talented actors ended up in a movie that was probably going to be a direct-to-video release without the stars.

Another item in the plus column is that the action really starts in the first five minutes with the President being killed, then we hear a bomb go off and a minute later we see another bomb go off and from there we get to see see and hear all of those things again and again. Watching the same bomb go off 5 times has never been so much fun! There is a nice car chase that ends in a fun collision and ends with Quaid's car being squished but leaves his suit in perfect condition! However, if anyone deserves to have a suit not get ruffled it is Dennis Quaid! Ultimately I felt the action and the thrills in the movie override the sheer stupidity of the plot holes and the silliness of the goofs. Also, the movie is almost derailed by the most absurd twist. The editor deserves some recognition so I am going to say that Stuart Baird is a wonderful film editor.

Final Grade: B-