Vantage Point

Credit where credits due because from the vantage point of the effective trailer for Pete Travis’s topically taut ticking timebomb movie you’d be expecting a big screen version of 24 suped up with enough A-Listers to make Danny Ocean jealous. Unfortunately looking at it from the perspective of an audience member in row 3G you get the diminished view that it’s a repetitive and often laughable political thriller that has about as much depth as an episode of Hollyoaks.

Botching any semblance of tension early on by shooting its explosive load in the opening scenes Vantage Point is the story of an assassination attempt on the president of the United States (William Hurt) told from the points of view of eight complete strangers. In the crowd is tourist Howard (Forest Whitaker – The Last King of Scotland) who is filming the dignitaries of a summit in Spain on his camcorder, pictures that are being broadcast on a global scale by GNN producer Rex Brooks (Sigourney Weaver) and that feature presidential bodyguards Thomas Barnes (Dennis Quaid – Inner Space) and Kent Taylor (Matthew Fox – Lost). Their individual stories are told one-by-one to the point of gunfire and explosions before re-winding using the movies gimmicky trick to the beginning and the next persons POV.

That gimmick, which was initially intriguing soon becomes so monotonously cyclic that by the third or fourth thread, and what appears to be countless use of the same shots that should have been avoided with a bit of creativity, you begin to think “enough already, get to the point”. The constant repetition also destroys any of the “whodunit” elements that the film briefly offered; you don’t need to be Colombo to see the “big twist” coming approximately twenty minutes in.

As for the impressive role call of actors this really is a film about seeing things differently because they must have read a completely different script to the final version. Although credible throughout they are each given some embarrassingly clonking dialogue, some of which had the press screening in hysterics during an intended emotional exchange in the films climax. This is not to say they are bad, just better than such derisory material.

It’s all the more surprising that the multiple angles and flash edits that resemble an average double-bill of the aforementioned Keifer Sutherland TV triumph are conducted by a British director of the caliber of Travis, he who helmed the superb Omagh. Such a heavy hand and low-brow approach were not expected.

Vantage Point is brainless throwaway action fodder that on the surface level wants to be a high octane version of Crash, but shell out to see it and all you’ll witness is a wreck.