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Crowded into a tiny square in a small Spanish town, reporters and cameramen and demonstrators and onlookers anxiously try to get a glimpse of President Ashton (William Hurt), who’s in the square to speak about the critical summit that’s about to start. Just as the president approaches the podium, though, shots ring out. The president goes down as Secret Service agents scramble and spectators race for the exits.
Vantage Point shows the action from several different points of view. First, there’s Rex (Sigourney Weaver), the American news network producer who watches it all from a trailer nearby. Then there’s Thomas Barnes (Dennis Quaid), the Secret Service agent who’s on his first active mission after taking a bullet from the president. There’s also Enrique (Eduardo Noriega), a local cop, Howard Lewis (Forest Whitaker), the American tourist who captures it on his video camera—and even the president himself. In theory, it’s a pretty cool idea—piecing the story together while watching it from several different perspectives. But the whole thing ends up feeling repetitive and rather pointless.
The first time through, the story is pretty interesting—because you don’t really know what’s coming. After a few minutes, though, the action stops, rewinds, and starts over from the beginning. The first time it happens, it’s surprising—and even intriguing. The more times it happens, however, the more frustrating it gets—especially since the story tends to stop just when things are starting to get exciting. The abrupt break in action kills the momentum—and, after a couple of times, starting all over again is simply exhausting. While the new perspective does occasionally reveal some interesting new pieces to the puzzle, it’s mostly more of the same. For the most part, you’ll know what’s coming next—and after seeing it a couple of times, you won’t care anymore.
You also won’t care about the characters—because, as is the case with a lot of big ensemble movies (like Bobby), there are so many big-name actors fighting for screen time that you don’t really get to know (or care about) any of the characters. Each one gets a couple of minutes of awkward development (like Whitaker’s character telling a total stranger that he and his wife are having marital problems) and a couple of minutes of action before stepping back into the shadows.
To make matters worse, though, Vantage Point is silly. The part involving the Spanish cop, for instance, is so over-the-top and ridiculously melodramatic that it feels more like a cheesy telenovela than an action movie. Director Pete Travis clearly tried really hard to make the movie feel serious and intense, but it’s so overdone that it’s laughable. Dennis Quaid’s intense facial expressions are ridiculous enough on their own—but having him make those intense facial expressions while he’s driving a tiny blue European economy car makes it absolutely hilarious.
While the concept is unique, Vantage Point just doesn’t work. The repetitive story gets old, the characters aren’t around long enough for you to care about any of them, and, in the end, the story that you’re trying to piece together isn’t all that interesting (or even believable). So no matter which way you look at it, Vantage Point just isn’t worth seeing.
