On Point
posted on Thursday, February 21, 2008 in Movie Reviews
Vantage Point is mainly being marketed for its unique storytelling style. The idea of dissecting a single event by shifting to several perspectives does sound pretty appealing, but really, that isn’t the greatest strength of this film. Vantage Point doesn’t really manage to keep that narrative as tight as it could be, but it makes up for it with crazy, action-y fun. The President of the United States is in Salamanca, Spain for an anti-terrorism summit. As he steps up to the lectern to give a speech, he takes shots to the chest. Explosions soon follow. The film assembles the pieces of the plot from the different characters that were there, from the news crew covering the event, to a veteran secret service agent, to a tourist who was taking video the entire time.
It's a bit like Kurosawa’s Rashomon (or for the more literature-inclined, Akutagawa's In a Grove), except the event doesn't change as we shift to another point of view. We're just seeing a different part of the story, things that the other characters may not have seen. It's an interesting storytelling experiment to say the least, pretty much keeping the audience guessing for most of the film. It doesn't always work, however; a couple of these vantage points don't seem entirely necessary. It's like they just needed to fill more time, and decided to write in another character. Sometimes, these characters' stories actually muddle the plot, providing contradictions to an already tenuous story. And because of their addition, the characters aren't nearly as fleshed out as they could be.
The story they're telling isn't watertight. One can easily point out a couple of strange discrepancies and a few timeline problems, but the film gets over that by being absolutely explosive. Once the pieces are pretty much in place, the film goes into full action film mode. There's a car chase sequence in this film through the streets of Salamanca that's pretty crazy. Things are crashing into other things and people are getting run over and there's dodging and weaving and it's all pretty great. It isn't the greatest action film by any means, but it does enough to keep everybody's hearts pumping.
It's really a credit to Dennis Quaid. Quaid is magnificent in this film, just emanating a Jack Bauer vibe that really gets you on his side. Quaid has always looked like the classic hero character, and he really gets to go all out here. Forest Whitaker comes off a little strange, but he always comes off a little strange. We don't really get to spend a lot of time watching the other characters, but the actors all do their jobs pretty well. It would've been nice to see more of William Hurt or Sigourney Weaver, but it's all good.
All in all, Vantage Point works. You could spend your time in the theater pointing out the flaws in the timeline, or trying to figure out the contradictions, but really, the filmmaking is strong enough to cover up the weaknesses. Just sit back and enjoy the ride.
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