Movie Reviews weekend 29Feb08 (cont.)

 

I saved this for last for a reason. Vantage Point is the quality movie of the current “post Oscars” movie batch. If you watch TV you’ve seen previews of this movie where Dennis Quaid acts suspenseful and you’ve seen big explosions but in the end this is a Memento movie, with slightly less . . . “what the heck is going on”.  The big explosions are used for their emotional impact and not as the definition of an action movie.  It is quite clear this movie is American made, as the explosion draw direct emotional similarity to the 9/11 attacks.  And yes, there is a car chase and it is actually quite good, and is used as the background for a montage of “this is how everything fits together”.

 

As Yahoo Movies tells me, “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. Also there is American TV news producer Rex Brooks, relaying the historic event to millions of TV viewers across the globe. As they and others reveal their stories, the pieces of the puzzle will fall into place - and it will become apparent that shocking motivations lurk just beneath the surface.”

 

I copied that word for word from Yahoo Movies because that is literally what the movie is. Quickly you realize you’re about to watch a very interesting story in the “real life” time span of about 30 total minutes of time. I should mention, that the crowd I was with started laughing three times in the movie, those times are the “restart point” for the 30 minutes because the story is told from different perspectives, but it starts at exactly the same point in every black screen. The film stops and rewinds back to 23 minutes before the event for each character.  Each time it stops, the audience is left on a cliffhanger which carries the film's tension into the next character. The black screen with timer countdown, to reset the plot, is comical yet effective in tying together the story.  Watching the movie, intertwines many characters together perfectly to weave this into a great story-telling effort by the director (Pete Travis, this is his first big screen effort and I will definitely be looking for more of his movies).

 

That being said, I’ve read several rather low rated reviews for this movie and I suspect those are from people who did not enjoy Memento or were distracted by the film rewind to begin another “Vantage Point”.  Vantage Point is not a mystery; the director does not try and make you solve the problems for yourself.  Each “Vantage Point” is additional background to the story and not a problem to solve, however each “Vantage Point” does add additional intrigue to the movie.  Avid movie watchers will attempt to guess the next plot twist, however those movie watchers who solely go to enjoy a movie, will enjoy this film, as well. I would classify this movie as somewhere between an action movie, political intrigue with an ever so small pinch of Hitchcock suspense thrown in (The Hitchcock influences are not a dominating feature).

 

Overall very good movie, very well done and I definitely recommend at the very least a rental of this movie. Rating: 3 stars.

 

 

Upcoming: Hopefully I’ll get to see 10,000 BC and The Bank Job.