Vantage Point Movie Review

Vantage Point (2008)

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Written by: Barry L. Levy
Directed by: Pete Travis
Starring: Dennis Quaid, Forest Whitaker, Matthew Fox, Bruce McGill, Edgar Ramírez, Saïd Taghmaoui, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver, William Hurt, Holt McCallany
Rated: PG-13
Watch the trailer

Plot
The attempted assassination of the American President is told and re-told from several different perspectives.

Verdict
This starts with a great premise, but half way in starts heading downhill, continuing the descent until the end. The main issue is that the different vantage points don't add much new information. They just last longer. Seeing in essence the same scene multiple time quickly gets boring. The movie doesn't have a handle whatsoever on why this group attempts the assassination which makes the whole plot hollow. The reason to tell the story as such is to hide the flimsy plot.
Skip it.

Review
This is a Rashomon (1950) inspired thriller where we get the story from different vantage points. This is nowhere near as good. The main problem is that each story doesn't add much information, rehashing what we've already seen and not adding much new information.

This starts with a news station covering a presidential speech. An assassination attempt is made and explosions rock the plaza. This backs up twenty minutes, complete with a rewind effect which the movie employs every single time.

Matthew Fox and Dennis Quaid play Barnes and Taylor

We follow secret service agent Barnes (Dennis Quaid) who's a bit shaky after having been shot in the line of duty. We basically see the same thing we saw in the opening sequence but this time it ends with Barnes looking at a monitor we can't see and exclaiming "Oh my god."

We get another story that ends on a cliff hanger. Each story plays a bit longer revealing more of the aftermath. The problem is that the first part of all the stories is the same sequence. We know there as an assassination attempt and an explosion. Whether we see it from the left or right side of the crowd doesn't matter.

Edgar Ramírez plays Javier

In addition to the main plot this has unexplained side plots like a kidnapping and a double agent. If you were to tell this story synchronous order it would be very short and make clear how silly this is.

The plot is made more intricate by how this story unfolds. We get a clearer picture of what happened, but not an explanation as to why. The last third of the movie is nonsense. I don't think this answers why the group attempted an assassination, but I may have just missed it as I was incredibly bored by that point. I think the reason this group attempted it in such a convoluted way was to bolster the plot of this movie.