KEY POINTS:
Herald rating: * *
A one-trick cinematic gimmick whose sleight of hand fails to disguise its shortcomings, this big-budget, big-name thriller is little more than a long and frustrating prelude to an unremarkable car chase.
The first Hollywood outing for director Pete Travis, who made the excellent
IRA bomb thriller Omagh, it depicts a terrorist attack on a summit in Spain (Mexico City stands in for Salamanca) where US President Ashton (Hurt) is appearing to announce an agreement that will, by unspecified means, bring an end to global terrorism.
The hook is that the events are narrated several times over through the eyes of several observers: the producer of an outside broadcast (Weaver); a Secret Service agent (Quaid) in the presidential detail, just back on duty and with good reason to feel nervous; a local cop (Ramirez); an American tourist (Whitaker) with a camcorder; a couple of those involved and the president himself.
The question is: why? The multiple-viewpoint narrative has some proud ancestors, notably Kurosawa's incomparable Rashomon which was a spellbinding exploration of what Kurosawa called "our inability to be honest with ourselves about ourselves". Like the many glib imitators that have followed, Vantage Point uses the technique self-servingly, to create the confusion that will be its primary dramatic device. All this film shows is that different witnesses to an event see and miss different things.
Whether deliberately or by default, the film plugs directly into the uneasy idea that "we are not being told everything" but it doesn't earn its right to such scepticism. It makes its points - the one about media bias, for example - with a bludgeon, not a rapier. In any case, it cheats. Different "views" of some scenes are actually wholesale rewrites.
In the end, it comes down to a pretty lame thriller littered with implausibilities - sidearms don't fire 20 shots; US presidents don't walk through crowds; and snipers' vantage points are checked before the president shows up. Standard practice since November 22, 1963.
Cast: Dennis Quaid, Matthew Fox, Forest Whitaker, Sigourney Weaver, William Hurt, Edgar Ramirez
Director: Pete Travis
Running time: 90 mins
Rating: M (violence, offensive language)
Screening: Hoyts, Rialto, SkyCity
Verdict: A film that shows a terrorist attack through the eyes of several observers is a gimmick in search of a point.