Vantage Point

In a plaza in Spain, the President (William Hurt) is about to give a speech to kick off a conference on anti-terrorism. Suddenly he is shot and a series of explosions rock the plaza. Witness to this event are several secret service men, a local Spanish police officer, an American tourist, an American news service and several of the terrorists involved. Thus the conceit and gimmick of the film is to repeatedly see the events each from their own unique "vantage point". Get it?

As a feat of production magic I'll give some credit to the person who coordinated the various intricacies of the story to tie each storyline together. But that's it, that's all I'm giving this horrible mess of boring. Pretty much from the first jump back to another point of view, I was annoyed. From the way they start every pov with a clock ticking away like the show "24", to the way each pov is ended by a rewind back to the arbitrary moment of 12:00, I was irritated and bored.

And don't think for a minute that there is anything beyond the gimmick. Because there really isn't. Just about every plot development you could imagine is telegraphed so blatantly that not one reveal in the entire movie is actually a surprise. Was this really the best they could do? What did the creators think lack of good story telling could be obscured by a cheap trick? Well actually that is probably exactly what they thought.

Apparently a handful of good actors had a desire to get a new car or build a new addition on the house. This is the usual reason as I understand it that actors of quality star in films that aren't fit to be used as bathroom tissue. And this film boasts not one but two! Academy award winning actors. For crying out loud, Mr. Hurt, you have four Academy Award nominations! And Mr. Whittaker, you were sherely brilliant as Idi Amin. Nothing of their talent shows up here.

And on the bad acting bandwagon, we've got Dennis Quaid and Jack Shepard...er Matthew Fox. Both are so wooden that its just embarrassing to watch. I don't even know what else to say. I was as tempted as I've ever been to walk out out of complete boredom but I was curious to see where this train wreck ended up? Remember how I said all it had was its gimmick? Well it doesn't even have that. A little over half way through the film, the gimmick collapses into a more traditional narrative.

How bad of an idea do you have when you can't even maintain the one thing that makes it novel? Not to mention that the finale requires such a intersection of coincidences and machinations of fate that it seems clear the writer just stopped caring. I shouldn't be so cavalier with these ad hominem attacks but I've seen bad movies and I've seen bad movies that aren't trying and this is clearly in the latter category.