Vantage Point

Dennis Quaid stars as Thomas Barnes – a U.S. Secret Service agent who valiantly protected President Ashton (William Hurt) from an assassin’s bullet about a year ago. He has rejoined the security detail for one of the biggest days in Ashton’s presidency as the Commander-In-Chief will be joining leaders of the West and Middle East to celebrate a peace accord at Plaza Major in Salamanca, Spain. However, it will not be a day of peace.

When the president is shot, and we see the events of the day from multiple points of view, will the shooter and the plotters be captured and brought to justice?

Why did they do it?

Vantage Point is a movie that features very intense, action-packed moments, but a story that gets overly complicated and borders on spinning out of control as it becomes too farfetched by the end. Writer Barry Levy and director Pete Travis pack the movie with plenty of details, questions about every character’s motivations, and twists and turns to keep the audience guessing, but overdo it a little bit, while also failing to fully explain why this has happened and what the bad guys and gals were trying to accomplish.

Vantage Point is a dense movie covering the events of a short period of time, but Travis and Levy could do a better job explaining everything once we figure out the plot. Although, I appreciate the depth of the mystery, even if it has one piece too many. I guess I am grateful to have a little too much to comprehend as opposed to trying to stay awake during a dumb movie.

Also, in a movie all about the editing, Travis and the editors do a great job putting all of the pieces together, and do a solid job of taking us from vantage point to vantage point, but overdo this, too. It’s cool to see the different perspectives the first couple of times as we witness the events of the day play out starting at 12 Noon for each character, which brings us closer and closer to the truth each character, as well as the audience, is seeking, but it feels like overkill by vantage point #4. Luckily, the movie starts to race forward and benefits from the excellent cast even as Vantage Point becomes a bit sillier by the minute as plot revelations start to occur without being grounded in what we learned before. Think of them as plot revelations for no good reason.

Quaid is awesome as the shaken secret service agent trying to cope with his worst fear, shortly after he had his most heroic moment. He brings a perfect amount of intensity and humanity to a character who could have been a cartoon, even when Agent Barnes seems to be unraveling.

Forest Whitaker also stands out as someone in the crowd who happens to have a camcorder, and gets drawn into the day’s action because he is in the right place at a horribly wrong time. He does a solid job representing the everyman, even if Levy gives him a trite plot about his family’s reaction and his interaction with them.

I have a big dispute with a major event at the end, and some of the action in these final scenes is far from possible, but Vantage Point is a solid movie.

Vantage Point is PG-13 for sequences of intense violence and action, some disturbing images and brief strong language