Thomas Barnes and Kent Taylor are two Secret Service agents assigned to protect President Ashton at a landmark summit on the global war on terror. When President Ashton is shot moments after his arrival in Spain, chaos ensues and disparate lives collide in the hunt for the assassin. In the crowd is Howard Lewis, an American tourist who thinks he’s captured the shooter on his camcorder while videotaping the event for his kids back home.
Vantage Point has gotten quite a lot of hype, it’s very topical (terrorism) it’s quite original (same event 8 unique points of view) and it has a fairly good cast (Dan Quaid, Forest Whitaker, Sigourney Weaver etc). Even though you could say it’s also a bit like Rashomon (4 view points of the same story).
It’s a bit slow to start with the first few “Rewinds” not giving a lot of interesting information about the story, so it’s a little repetitive…by the 3rd or 4th “Rewind” the people in the cinema had started laughing wtf.
Anyway it was getting interesting by then…but it reminds me why I hate going to the cinema, because people are noisy and annoying, they take their kids into late night shows…and it’s bloody cold!
I prefer GSC btw, but they had all sold out, so tried at TGV – unsurprisingly they had loads of space.
The movie is pretty good, the acting is solid, the action is good, there are some believable and compelling characters, the camera work is a bit shaky if you are prone to motion sickness though.
There’s some action, drama, touch of romance, humanity, politics and current affairs. It’s definitely worth a watch and definitely a movie you should catch on the big screen.
One thing I would say which stems from the above, is it’s trying to do too many things, some of which a bit convoluted…too many characters which you don’t really get to know and too many double/triple crosses.
It was between Jumper and this…this being the first choice.
I give Vantage Point a watchable but not amazing (fairly predictable) 5.5/10 (Hello it’s no Bourne Ultimatum).
It’s like 24, but over 24 minutes instead. saw the twist coming a mile away. Ending was quite exciting though.
I had heard a lot of bad things about the movie from my friends but i am soo glad i went for it! Even though they repeated the scenes like a gajillion times, everytime showed something different so it was very entertaining. And yes brilliant acting although at the end the plot became a bit to ‘convenient’…like the ambulance crashing exactly near Quaid! Still, a great watch!
And i totally agree about how annoying it is getting (increasingly) to go to the cinema. Malaysians are sometimes quite the uneducated lot!
yea i have to agree with you that the rewind scenes were repetitive after the 3rd one. but all in all it was not bad a movie.
the only thing i have against the movie is the “IMMORTALITY” of dennis quaid and the car he was driving in the car chase scene.
Glad you reviewed it. I saw the trailer on TV and thought it looked very good. Now that I know more about it I think I might wait for it to be on Video.
My batch of audience laughed too from the 3rd rewind onwards. After the moview ends, there’s some audience clapping too. Don’t know whether they were clapping because the movie is great or clap of relieve that they don’t have to endure anymore rewind.
Okaylah…it’s going to be a DVD watch for me. The next big show I’m really looking forward to is Iron Man!
ok…i am also planning to watch Jumper and Vantage Point in the cinema, cos both have very intense and impactful thrillers. I guess the thrillers are the most exciting to watch these days. anyway, now im having second thoughts.
Yeah, Thriller is very exciting. That Michael Jackson is really something, huh? I loved that music video too!