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 | Best offer for Vantage Point (Region 2 DVD)Best Price for Vantage Point (Region 2 DVD) is at Send It - £2.89
Store: Send It - see offers at all stores | SummaryVantage 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 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 within fifteen minutes 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" might be more accurate. The opening reel, effectively jolting, affords an initial overview of the events through the eyes, lenses, monitors, and duelling sensibilities of a TV news producer (Sigourney Weaver), her activist-minded reporter (Zoe Saldana) and crew. Everybody’s in Salamanca 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 closeup--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 |
| vantage point | | Highly recommend. Have lent it to family and frineds. No bad feedback - all enjoyed. Fantastic film. Action from beginning to end. This film is entertainment at its best. | Written on 17 June 2010 |  |
| Book 'Vantage point' | | Bought as a gift voucher and selected by the recipient. Now a valued addition to the family library. | Written on 21 May 2010 | |
| Very good | | Fast paced and action packed. Very enjoyable film with twists and turns. Will keep you guessing until the end. Highly recommended. | Written on 19 January 2010 |  |
| Vantage Point | | This film was interesting, shot from different witnesses' viewpoints, and Dennis Quaid was his usual best. However, the film lacked the flow and continuity you would expect from a thriller of this genre. Worth watching once though. | Written on 06 November 2009 | |
| Bit of a wasted opportunity courtesy of the Quaid-Whitaker Factor | This is a well put together thriller with great locations, zippy pace, twisty plot and an initially fascinating (if slightly familiar) device of "rewind to multiple vantage points." It's not until the final chase that you realise why it doesn't hang together as well as it could have. In two words, Dennis Quaid. The exterior chase shots and gags play thrillingly enough: it's just that the cuts to the inside of the heromobile reveal an inflexible "driver" of advancing years and stilted, arthritic, almost constipated "heroic" expression that undercut our suspension of disbelief to a point of incredulity, if not hilarity.
It makes me sad to write this of Quaid: an attractive actor who has previously given us a sexy, agile way with a role most typified by his glorious two-hander (if that's the phrase I'm looking for) with Ellen Barkin in the delicious Big Easy. Well, Dennis is now a bit bigger and the stunts come far less easily, I'm afraid. He just doesn't look as comfortable here as, say, Clint might have done; which is a shame, because the film otherwise has high watchability, care of the gimmicky but efficient multi-view "hook" and reliable turns from William Hurt and Sigourney Weaver included. One other disappointment, now we're on the subject, is Forest Whitaker, here required to give us his familiar, needy-loveable, tokenistically patronising, smiley-innocent, vacuous persona previously seen in his risible "empath" in Species (and many miles from the chilling Idi Amin he gave in The Last King of Scotland).
I guess the failure to get performances from actors whose potential we otherwise relish is down to, what, casting direction? the administrative necessity for bankable "stars"? Whatever the case, it just goes to show how much of, say, the Bourne Success is down to factors beyond the action/thriller ingredients often glibly assumed to be the whole key to excellence in this genre. Finally, then, an efficient and mostly entertaining film; but let down in the casting department and the assumptions of formulaic success from those responsible. | Written on 23 September 2009 | |
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