Vantage Point (2008)

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Best movie ever!

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Vantage Point offers a fun new twist on the action thriller. Yes, it's a little gimmicky and predictable, but it is still a fun ride. Plus, it was quite intense at parts, and it had good performances all around.

This movie about an attempt on the President, asks the audience to suspend just too much disbelief in telling it's story. Plus it's clunky and has plot holes large enough to drive a truck through.

Vantage Point tells a story of an attempted assassination of the President of the United States during a live television broadcast. The film attempts to tell the story from several different perspectives of key people who were at the event. It's up to Secret Service Agent Thomas Barnes (Dennis Quaid) to utilise all of his skill in order to catch the perpetrator...I generally like conspiracy thrillers as when they are done right they will invariably keep you involved in their story and will leave you guessing. Sadly, I never felt that way at any point whilst watching Vantage Point. The film jumps backwards and forwards in order to show the assassination from a different point of view in order for the audience to try and piece everything together to determine who pulled the trigger. Whilst this is necessary to the plot, I didn't find that I learnt very much from seeing things from the different perspectives; most of the time the story arcs mainly consist of messy sequences and it never really feels like each of the characters has a story to tell. It also has to be said that the film also feels a tad gimmicky - the constant rewinding of the events was unnecessary and whilst it was technically good it seemed to just exist merely for the director and editor to show-off. Elsewhere however some of the editing and camera work was quite poor; the car chase scene towards the end was dizzying and could potentially bring about nausea.Another problem with the approach to the narrative and the character perspectives (aside from being pretty uninteresting) is that some of the same characters repeat their same scenes in other people's story arcs which unfortunately made the film feel a little monotonous and repetitive. Yes you argue that this is necessary to slot everything together, but for me seeing more or less the same scene on a continuous loop does not make for a particularly insightful, interesting or engrossing experience it just makes the film dull. Vantage Point is not a film it's merely a series of repetitive action sequences cleverly edited together with little in the way of plot or story to glue everything together. It's basically just one big gimmick and not a particularly impressive one at that. Avoid.

What a waste of great acting talent. I just watched it on TV and how glad I am I watched it on cable and didn't have to pay to see this movie. So what do you get? Action? Yes. Car chases: definitely. Original filming: I can appreciate the attempt. Good acting: Always Love Forest Whitaker. 4 points. What was missing? Credibility: 2 bombs passing security, cars hitting walls without airbags opening up, infiltration, people dying on one bullet while other ones keep going and a President that is kidnapped and not assassinated for whatever reason. President is saved, everybody happy. If you have seen Man on Fire then you know why this is such a bad movie. There have been films review-slaughtered who where much and much better then this one. So if you want a brainless action movie, go ahead - but there are much better movies in this category. If you want nothing but pure car chases: go rent the Fast and the Furious. Nice try. No Cigar.