I'm still trying to play catch up on all the stuff I've gotten to see this week, so bear with me. Next up on my spring break movie marathon is Vantage Point. The film's advertising was equal parts enticing and frustrating. I was sold when I saw this would be a film that would use the Rashomon style of filmmaking by showing a singular incident from multiple perspectives. However, I was dismayed to see a critical and surprising plot point get revealed during the commercials. Still, with a limited amount of films to choose from at the theaters right now, there was enough here to get me to go watch up.
The basic premise involves the president of the United States attending a summit in Spain and as he's prepared to speak, he's shot. We then see this assassination attempt from the eyes of many different characters including Dennis Quaid as a Secret Serviceman, who's just returned to the job after being shot himself, Forrest Whittaker as a tourist watching the historic moment, and Sigorney Weaver as a cable news channel producer who is covering the summit. With each person's story, the film rewinds back to noon and replays things, each time adding something new.
In general, I like the idea of telling a story from multiple perspectives. I do wish that the director had chosen some more stylistic ways to shift from one person's perspective to the next. His transitions give the sense of repetitiveness and frustration. We didn't need to see the seconds ticking up to noon each time a new character's perspective was shown. We also didn't need to see the same shots so many times. I'm not talking about seeing the same events over and over again, because that is necessary for this style of storytelling. Rather, I'm talking about seeing the same visuals each time. This, to me, just reeked of lazyness.
While some of the characters' stories built nicely upon each other, others felt forced. There were too many times where characters nonsensically interacted with each other or acted in certain ways that weren't plausible, yet needed to be done in order for the multiple perspectives method to work. I got the sense that the filmmakers fell in love with this method of storytelling, yet did not come up with a robust enough story to make it work.
As I mentioned before, the commercials gave away a major plot twist in their commercials. Now this is not the first film to do this and it certainly won't be the last. However, as annoying as that can be, it was even more problematic for this particular film. When you use this method of storytelling, it means that each story is to provide us something new and interesting. Well, if your commercials reveals something interesting that doesn't occur until halfway through the film, then you're forcing your audience to sit through 50 minutes of unnecessary storytelling. If you have been fortunate enough to miss most of the advertising for this film, you may not care about this criticism since you should still be able to enjoy the film and not realize what will happen.
The film does have one other twist in it, but it's reveal is equally annoying, yet for different reasons. At the end of Dennis Quaid's storyline (which is the second one shown in the film), he spots something on a TV monitor, which shocks him, yet the audience doesn't see it. What he saw isn't revealed to us until the end of the film. That would be fine suspenseful drama if it were not for the fact that we had to sit through a bunch of ancillary storytelling before that point. If we could have just seen what was on that screen during Quaid's story, it would have moved things along much quicker. But on the other hand, the film would have probably only been about 20 minutes long then.
Even though I have been critical of the approach the director took with the multiple perspective method, I could have overlooked at lot of it, had he stayed true to this method. Once the final perspective is shown and we learn the big twist, the film shifts gears into generic action film and spends a significant amount of time on a generic car chase. The chase scene goes on too long and is poorly shot. Many people complain about the shaky cam method of shooting a scene that is seen in films like The Bourne Supremacy, but I typically do not have a problem with it; usually because the people filming them are skilled filmmakers. However, the camera work during this chase scene nearly made me nauseous. I could not believe how long they let this scene go on for, especially considering we basically knew how it would end thanks to some of the earlier scenes from other characters' perspectives.
As the film comes to a close, it can't even find a way to include all of the characters. This just confirmed to me that some were added as mere plot devices. To me, if you're going to provide multiple characters' perspectives, then they should all be involved in how the film is resolved. Instead, the film continues to retread into generic action film territory and loses any goodwill it may have gained with it's initial unique method of storytelling. Worst of all, we never get a good understanding of the villains motives in the film. Would it have killed them to come up with a story from their perspective to make us understand why they chose to attack the president?
I really wanted to like this film and there are certainly elements touched upon the film that make you see it could have been something special. Issues such as media censorship, country loyalty, heroicism, and the importance of family are all introduced but never developed. Instead, we get a half-baked action film filled with actors who seemingly chose to do this in order to make a quick payday.
Despite my complaints, the film isn't exactly terrible. It just came off worse to me given what I had hoped it would be. Perhaps with this review, I have lowered your expectations enough that if you decide to watch this on DVD or cable that it will seem a bit more palatable to you. The film does enough to work as a simple action film, but fails at being an intelligent thriller. Depending on where your tastes fall on that spectrum, this one may just fit the bill. But from my vantage point, the film doesn't offer a fresh perspective on the genre. Grade: C
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