|
|
|
Vantage
Point
(2008)
 
Vantage Point may have won the weekend
box office, but it failed to win over the audience of the busy
New York theater where I sat through it. The film inspired
guffaws of derisive laughter, a smattering of boos and a great
deal of sarcastic clapping. And perhaps no one was more disappointed
than I was because I had convinced not one, not two, but three
friends to see this clunker with me. One of these friends
aptly described the film as "Roshamon for Idiots."
I should have known from the first bit of gimmick editing that it would have
been wise to get up, cut my monetary losses and just leave. The movie repeats
the same ten to twenty minutes over and over again, each time it rewinds back
to the starting point. It's insipid. It's the kind of thing you could have only
found clever if you were a particularly slow-witted fourteen-year-old who was
seeing a movie for only the second time in your life. Shame on all the film's
editors (Stuart Baird, Sigvaldi Karason, and Valdis Oskarsottir). Shame on you
all.
As the movie goes on it just keeps getting worse and worse. Forest Whitaker shouldn't be cast in anything that involves him running (let alone outrunning a speeding vehicle). Secret Service Agents don't just defect because they don't like the war on terror and if one did (and that's a big if) there are so many redundancies that just one man couldn't sneak an Iphone controlled assault riffle into a hotel overlooking the podium the President is going to speak from.
And more than just general stupidity there are problems with the geography and the timing of some of the scenes made all the more glowering obvious because you see the events over and over again. This is also where the premise, a story told through eight points of view, breaks down a little bit. Yes, in real life people would remember the same incidents differently. We've seen Rashomon; it's a masterpiece. But it's unsatisfying to see the same character, essentially in two places at once (I'm looking at you Said Taghmaoui!). This isn't a matter of perspective.
Vantage Point also breaks the popular thriller convention that the audience knows more than the characters. During several sequences of the film the audience is annoyingly the last to know, a tactic we can all blame on Lost's success (and perhaps, the adoption of this tactic inspired casting Matthew Fox).
Vantage Point is a wreck seen from eight points of view. Its editing is gimmicky. The story lines are well worn and uninspired. Director Peter Travis doesn't add anything new but instead stacks all the old schlock we've seen a thousand times before into a big steaming pile. Even with a very, very talented cast the movie feels like an especially poor Michael Bay movie. Bad style over no substance.
-Scott
Kline
|
|
|
|
All contents ©
2004-2007 Thoughtsonfilm.com |
|
|
 |
Director:
Peter
Travis
Writer: Barry
Levy
Starring: Dennis
Quaid, Matthew Fox, Forest Whitaker, Sigourney Weaver, William
Hurt, James LeGros, Saïd Taghmaoui
Distributor: Columbia
Pictures
Runtime: 90
min
Rating: PG-13
Release Date: February
22, 2008
|
|
 |
|
