The whole Vantage Point experience is like the process of solving a jigsaw puzzle – you get individually meaningless pieces of the big picture, but once you place them together, you get the answer to the question.

From My Vantage Point
Vantage Point is about an assassination attempt on the president of United States during an anti-terrorism summit conference in Spain. When it was US President Ashton’s (William Hurt) turn to speak, he was shot right in his chest, sparking off hysterics and massive chaos among the spectators. If that wasn’t enough to give bystanders a cardiac arrest, 2 go off minutes later.

The story regarding the whole attack continues, as related from the point of view, or vantage point as the filmed is named, of the 8 crucial witnesses– from a director of an American TV station to Secret Service agents to even a tourist. This action-packed thriller will definitely keep your adrenaline pumping and hold your attention every second of this film.

Awesome!
What’s so great about this film is the well-choreographed plot. Each flashback establishes the link with each other, and as the story develops, it reveals a clearer picture of the conspiracy. As with any good suspense film, people you thought didn’t matter become surprisingly crucial to the film.

This film never fails to grab my attention and keeps me highly anticipated for the next action. The deafening gun shots, the distressed crowd, the risky car chase – all these made my heart thumped really fast, so much so that I have to place a hand on my chest to calm myself down.

How the film is shot has taken my breath away, especially when Agent Barnes (Dennis Quaid ) is chasing Veronica (Ayelet Zurer) and Suarez (Said Taghmaqui) when he found out that they are part of the assassination ploy. You can feel the thrill of high speed driving and sudden bends, and that is really shiok (local term for awesome)!

Kudos to the wonderful editing skills, especially the signature flashback that never fails to start with a rewind of previous scenes and arrive at a white screen with the time appearing at the bottom left hand corner, ticking a few seconds away to noon. However, that unfortunately became too much after a few repetitions. The murmering audience seemed to concur.

Something to work on
However, on the downside, the film left some questions unanswered. One example would be the mystery of Agent Barnes. In the movie, he had actually saved President Ashton in an earlier assassination attempt. So where did Barnes disappear to just before the conference, and how did President Ashton not know of his return?
And how did President Ashton’s double come about in such a short time? How did his men know about the assassination ploy? Are they behind this too? Enlightenment please! I’m dying to know.

Personally, I think the film is too fast-paced and a tad unbelievable. Perhaps, they should just zoom in on the Agent Barnes mystery and revolve the film around uncovering his past. It would have been much better than the current one. What Vantage Point has given to the audience was surface details – Agent Barnes’ unknown return, the double’s immediate presence, and the assassin’s initial killing motive. Of course it would be nice to have all these intriguing details in the film but Vantage Point has definitely failed to satisfy the inquisitive audience. To add on, the assassin plan was too smooth to be true. It makes assassination seem so easy.

Before you start to throw rotten tomatoes and scream, “You are such a spoiler!”, I’m pleased to inform you that all these are in the trailer.

But nonetheless, this film is definitely worth the precious 90 minutes of your life. You don’t need people to tell you how good a film is when your eyes are rooted to the screen,

UrbanWire gives Vantage Point 3 out of 5 stars

Movie Details

Opens: Mar 20
Movie Rating: PG
Running Time: 90 mins
Language: English
Cast: Dennis Quaid, Matthew Fox, Forest Whitaker, Edgar Ramirez, Ayelet Zurer, Sigourney Weaver, William Hurt, Eduardo Noriega, Said Taghmaqui [only 3 names]
Director: Pete Travis