Film Review: Vantage Point

nobody@vox.com(Life With Cats) — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 13:59:27 -0700

So Mike and I are probably the last people to see this film, since it's been out for quite awhile. It was much better than I was expecting, since some reviewers didn't care for the repetitiveness. I think generally they pulled it off.

In a nutshell, the US president is the target of an assassination by terrorists. Uh-huh, so what else is new? He's shot, a hotel lobby is blown up, then the grandstand explodes. This takes place in Salamanca, Spain, where world leaders have gathered for some kind of kick-terrorist-ass summit. We watch the chain of events from the perspectives of several different people: a news exec (Sigourney Weaver), a tourist (Forest Whitaker), a Secret Service agent (Dennis Quaid), the terrorists themselves and the president (William Hurt). While it does get a bit tiresome to keep returning to 12:00 p.m., with each telling we at least learn something new.

Neither director Pete Travis nor screenwriter Barry Levy has worked on anything of note (no-name films and mini-series), so I'm not sure who is responsible for the hokey aspects of this film. Whitaker's tourist acts like he's never seen people or buildings before, and he befriends a kid with an ice cream cone. Unfortunately this kid plays a pivotal role much later in the film, so she keeps popping up in all her wholesome goodness. There is a lengthy, exciting car chase on the narrow streets of Salamanca in the tiniest subcompacts I've ever seen.

Despite the replaying of the assassination and the unbeliveable things Whitaker the tourist does (how many other tourists in an unfamiliar country chase Secret Service agents around town?), Vantage Point is an emotionally intense, generally satisfying action/drama that kept me guessing until the end. As long as I can't predict the "bad guy" within the first 15 minutes of a film, I'm happy.

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