Vantage Point **
Cast: Dennis Quaid, William Hurt, Matthew Fox, Forest Whitaker, Eduardo Noriega, Edgar Ramirez, Said Taghmaoui, Ayelet Zurer, Sigourney Weaver
Director: Pete Travis
Running Length: 1:30
MPAA Classification: PG-13

At an anti-terrorism summit in Spain, an assassination attempt is made on President Ashton (Hurt). After the president is shot, chaos reigns. During the pandemonium, there is a distant explosion followed by one in the arena. Secret service agent Thomas Barnes (Quaid) must find the assassin before its too late.

The movie’s hook is that is shows the events from multiple points of view. First, through the eyes of a news broadcast, then through Barnes’ eyes. Next is a police officer’s (Noriega) point of view, a tourist’s (Whitaker), and then the President’s. There is backtracking to show perspectives from the same starting point, and each point of view takes the story a little further into the future.

“Vantage Point” has two large drawbacks. First, the very nature of the film reduces all the roles to extended cameos. None of the characters feel like the focus of the film, and none have any real development. Quaid and Hurt do what they can, but they aren’t given much to work with. The other problem is that for a movie built around the novelty of seeing the characters’ point of view, they abandon that approach in the last 30 minutes, reverting back to a “normal” movie. What does work is the level of intensity that is maintained through much of the film. There is enough action to make one forget about some of the absurdities of the plot as well. Overall, this was a movie that could have been better with some tweaking.