Movie Review: Vantage Point

We ordered "Vantage Point" on Pay-Per-View the other night.

No spoilers here.

It's got an impressive cast including Dennis Quaid, Forest Whitaker, Sigourney Weaver, and William Hurt. At first I wasn't sure if they'd just aged that much in real life or they were playing older folks but, no, they've aged. (Sorry, folks, me, too.) Still, they and the long list of actors did a pretty good job with this concept movie.

In a nutshell, there's an assassination attempt and you get to see it played out over and over, each time from a different person's perspective.

I like thrillers and I like movies that muck with your sense of reality and I particularly like ones that combine the two, which this attempts to do. With each "retelling" of events, you get more clues about what just happened or what's about to happen. So you spend a lot of time saying to the yourself*, "Wait! He just saw something! What did he see?!" and hoping it'll be resolved in the next retelling.

The tag line "8 Strangers. 8 Points of View. 1 Truth." is what they try to offer up but it's not a perfect approach. The movie "cheats" in sometimes showing you things that aren't strictly in the viewer's range. And the device used to signal that viewpoints are about to switch--the scenes you just watched play quickly in reverse until you are back at the start--gets annoying, particularly after the third or fourth time. There are flaws in the plot and it gets heavy-handed with it's political message. Plus, how the movie wraps up all the loose bits is contrived.

Even with all that said, I liked it. There were plenty of plot twists, confounding clues and adrenaline-charged chase scenes to keep me watching. It's worth the Pay-Per-View price ($4.99), certainly. I give it 2 out of 4 jujubees.


* Or to the person next to you, if you're rude like that. Guess which I did.