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Vantage Point   | 
| Director: Pete Travis
Actors: Dennis Quaid, Matthew Fox, Forest Whitaker, Bruce Mcgill, Edgar Ramirez
Studio: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
Category: Movie
Buy New: $3.99
Rating:  125 reviews
Sales Rank: 61
Genre: Action
Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Media: Video On Demand
Running Time: 91
ASIN: B001DIZPXA
Theatrical Release Date: February 22, 2008
Release Date: November 19, 2008 (New: Last 30 Days)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews: Read 120 more reviews...
 Vantage Point - Gets Better Towards the End, Worth Watching! March 8, 2008
24 out of 26 found this review helpful
"Vantage Point" is a good action drama that you can predict pretty well from the trailer. It is based on a concept that has been done many times before, that of telling the same story from multiple points of view. Fans of "24" will get a strong sense of deja vu 24 - Season 1 (Slim - Pack). Yet the core story is interesting. The action sequences and great camera work make this a movie worth watching. Good acting and a strong finish help to overcome some loose ends and production errors.
The President of the United States (William Hurt), or POTUS as referred to by the secret service, is the target of a group of terrorists whose objectives are never revealed to us. While overseas to attend an anti-terrorism summit in Spain, he is shot. Or is he?
Dennis Quaid and Mathew Fox (of "Lost" fame Lost - The Complete First Season) play secret service agents there to protect the President. After multiple attacks occur after the president is shot, they scramble to try to respond and find the shooter. It is very difficult to tell which attacks are meant to kill and which are meant to divert attention away from the villains.
Quaid takes advantage of Forest Whitaker's camcorder film and the media's tapes to piece together the story. As each of the characters is swung into action, we get to see their individual struggles to cope with chaos and how their stories are interconnected.
Perhaps in an homage to "24," after each character's scene finishes it 'rewinds' to the beginning to give us the next character's 'vantage point.' This gets old fast. After a while, these vantage points seem to disintegrate into one another and overlap more and more. In fact, this is one story where the effect seems to have taken away from the story.
The action sequences are very strong, and even though there's a lot of hand held camera work they get enough steady shots to make the chase scenes watchable. Most notable is a car chase scene that is bound to draw comparisons to Ronin Ronin, The Bourne Identity The Bourne Identity (Widescreen Extended Edition), The Italian Job The Italian Job (Special Collector's Edition) and other recent car chase movies. Putting together a sequence like that is very difficult, and I can't wait for the DVD to see how they did it. What can I say, I'm a sucker for a good car chase.
The pacing of the movie is good and especially improves once we get to the last few vantage points. The score is excellent and blends well with the action sequences. We are purposely left without reasons why this group is after the president.
There are some technical things that are off in the movie. Anybody who has ever been to Spain will get that uneasy feeling. Once you see the Mexican extras and hear them speak a very Central American Spanish it becomes clear they are in Mexico, not Spain. They try to use a few Spanish actors, but it's not enough to feel like Spain.
Some parts of the dialogue seem overly preachy. Still, this movie does effectively portray how difficult security planning is in a world where government security tactics are public knowledge. The story probably would have been more profound and meaningful with a traditional plot-line, which it turns into at the end anyway.
This movie is worth watching and improves a lot towards the end. You just have to get past several very annoying rewind sequences and plenty of early repetition.
Enjoy!
 "Do you see what I see?" March 1, 2008
11 out of 16 found this review helpful
US President Ashton (Hurt) is set to attend an anti-terrorist conference in Salmanca, Spain. Agent Thomas Barnes (Quaid) is back on duty after being shot defending the President from an attempted assassination.
Howard Lewis (Whitaker) is on vacation in Spain and filming the conference for his family back home. He sees movement in a window behind the President and catches the assassin on tape.
The rest of the film is from 8 separate vantage points and tells the tale of the attempted assassination and kidnapping of the US President by terrorists. The action's fast and the scene 'rewinds' each time for a new 'vantage point.'
Yes, the concept's been done before, but I have to get a nod to a stellar cast. Hurt, Quaid, Whitaker all had me lost in their personal stories and rooting for the 'good guys.'
WARNING: Rewinds may be a problem for folks with vertigo, migraines or seizures. I have vertigo and offer this warning to others. Note--for some reason, this film panned out well enough that I wasn't dizzy or nauseated afterwards. IMHO, that's a job well done for the cinematographer.
3 Stars and I am being kind. April 8, 2008
10 out of 11 found this review helpful
This film just follows on with the trend of every other post 9/11 terrorist movie. This one going for a slight twist when a terrorist attack is committed against the president of the United States in Spain is seen through various angles and peoples perspectives.
Problem with this film is as I have pointed out its been done a million times before and is just frankly getting boring now (Imagine watching 24 with even less interest and you get the idea) We have the disgruntled secret serviceman who has previously "took a bullet" for the president but never quite recovered, family man American on holiday who when not filming the whole event gets on with the locals and even saves a few of them, hard sell camera crew (Changed CNN to GNN)they even seemed to pick the darkest Spanish people to be as support actors (Was that just to emphasise to the American audience that this was Spain?)
So we have unknown terrorist group whose goal is never quite explained (Though they do appear to have an Arabic name and a base in "friendly" Morocco. I guess just giving us that was enough to convince us of their "badness") Plan an elaborate terrorist attack (If these people do have this kind of planning then God help us all!) with a multi national group with an end aim that is just as unexplained as the actual goals of the organisation itself. Running chase, so called twist to the tale, not so subtle hints as to who the bad guys are and you pretty much have the plot (Not that there is much of one) We are even given a moving speech from the president who refuses to retaliate to the bomb attack with a military strike because that would be "Just what these people want" and encourages his advisers to stick with the conference (Was this supposed to be some kind of "What could have been" Post 9/11) Either way it becomes a mute point when his advisers get gunned down 2 seconds later.
Difficult to have anything positive to say about this film. Instantly forgettable.
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