The Vantage Point

Title: VANTAGE POINT
Cast: Dennis Quaid, William Hurt, Matthew Fox, Forest Whitaker, Eduardo Noriega, Edgar Ramirez, Said Taghmaoui, Ayelet Zurer, Sigourney Weaver
Director: Pete Travis
Screenplay: Barry L. Levy
Cinematography: Amir Mokri
Music: Atli Övarsson
Length: 90min
Oh and if you are wondering…yup I did catch them back to back. Like buy a ticket, pop in, watch the movie, pop out, buy another ticket, pop in again!!

Right so as I do let us begin by summarizing the movie in one word then shall we – WellSeeItIfYouMustButThenNothingToShoutAbout.

I know I know what you are thinking, that is not one word now is it? But then let me ask you this, do you really care as long as you get what I am trying to say? :P
I must say though that the concept behind the movie is very interesting. I don’t think I have come across many such movies that try to do something different (and NO I will not consider Cloverfield here). I will describe the plot in a nutshell and then discuss what is unique with this movie

Plot: The movie revolves around the central plot of assassination of US president (William Hurt) while he is attending a landmark summit in Spain which hopes to bring an end to terrorrism. Thousands of spectators occupy the plaza where this event is happening and but of course there are hoards of media people with their cameras and recording instruments.
As soon as the US president takes the podium and begins his speech two shots are fired from somewhere which hit the president straight on in his chest.

William Hurt as President Ashton

While the world and the security services are still trying to scurry away Mr. President for medical attention and are trying to control the resulting pandemonium we have a few blasts that take out the entire stage and the surroundings. Caught in this action along with our Mr. President is Thomas Barnes(Dennis Quaid) one of the Secret Service agents who has only recently been reinstated after taking a bullet for Mr. President an year earlier. He is initially portrayed as a man fighting desperately to hold onto his sanity, someone who is constantly living the nightmare of being shot and who is trying harder with every passing moment to elude the tentacles of the horrors of the past that creeps on behind his back when he is not looking and that which tries to pull him back into the dark abyss of nothingness dissolving his will to fight to live and even to survive.

Darn! I keep forgetting I am doing a movie review and not writing a literary piece here. And I also forget that most of you who are interested in my insane babble knows the place where to find the deluges of it – http://achingpen.blogspot.com. Pardon moi!

Dennis Quad as Thomas Barnes

So back to the review then, this as I described above is the basic plot. Here comes the interesting part
Interesting Part: This movie doesn’t flow from a beginning in time to an end in time in a linear fashion.

Confused?

So am I.

Wait lets try again. In this movie the events though happen one after the other as in any normal movie, they are not displayed or shown on the screen in the chronological order of their happening in the movie. To elaborate, this movie takes into account various central characters and show the events as they note those events in the movie (and hence the title The Vantage Point). The movie keeps rewinding to 11:59:57 a.m. where the entire series of events start. This rewinding of the movie to this particular time while is essential for the theme of the movie, it is a tiring exercise for the audience who have to see a few key events at least (like the gun shots, bombing etc) every time the movie rewinds. However since with every rewind the viewers see the events from a different person’s involvement and interaction with the situation depending on this location in the movie. There are always new happenings depending on where that person was during the course of the events and each replay fills in some pieces of the puzzle. But nonetheless the repetition of the few central events is enough to bore you at times.

There that makes more sense now, doesn’t it?

So while this movie tries to do something different in the terms of narrating a story from different point of views of the different characters involved in the sequence of events filling in some pieces of puzzle with every rewind (like who masterminds this assassination etc.), still towards the end there are more questions unanswered than the movie actually strives to answers. It is an interesting watch for sure purely because of its concept but I would suggest that you buy two tickets, one for yourself and the other for your brain as you can conveniently leave it on the seat next to yours. You won’t have to use it during the course of the movie anyways. If you do manage to use it I salute you and I hereby declare that whenever the Queen (yeah yeah God save the Queen, Jeez!) decides to bestow Knighthood on yours truly I shall promptly bang my chest and declare in my most formal voice that I truly believe that you are the more deserving one for this honour.

Verdict: If you have nothing better to do and if you are interested in exploring how such a narration of events can work from different points of view depnding on the interaction of various characters involved in the plot then definitely do go and watch this. The Vantage Point is a moderately paced movie and would keep you interested till the end. But be aware that the frequent rewinds would bore you at times. Not to forget that by the end there are some questions unanswered and movie almost ends abruptly. It’s a good timepass though (certainly much better than Cloverfield IMHO) and I would recommend you do catch this once but don’t have any high hopes.