Our take on Vantage Point

Before the Olympics and Phelpsmania started we watched Vantage Point. This film had a number of big names. Dennis Quaid, William Hurt, Forest Whitaker, Sigourney Weaver (where the heck has she been all this time?) and Matthew Fox. So, with a cast like that one would have fairly high expectations.

In a nutshell, the President (William Hurt) is in Spain, giving a public speech in an open plaza and is shot in an assassination attempt....or was he? We see this play out in the first 10 minutes of the movie, the rest of the time we see bits and pieces of the plot revealed through the eyes of his secret service agents, observers in the crowd, the news reporters covering the speech, and a local police officer. Each time the perspective changes the movie does this rewinding thing taking you back to the next person who moves the plot along.

MJP thinks - it was okay. It would probably be good if you happened to catch it on cable. It was 90 minutes in length and even then felt a bit long. I also thought the plot was a bit unbelievable. Come on, with as unpopular as we are in the world, would the President be giving a public speech like this anywhere outside the country? The rewinding effect was clever....once...not the 6 or 7 times it happens through the movie, and I thought the actors in the movie were kind of wasted with the shaky plot.

SJP thinks - if you have 90 minutes that you don't mind wasting, knowing that you will never get it back again, then this is the movie for you! Besides a plot with timelines that didn't match from each respective "vantage point", to clichéd diaglogue, in my humble opinion, this was just a mess. Honestly, it sucked the life right out of me. By the time it was over I didn't know if I wanted to let out a primal scream or just curl up in the fetal position! Normally my husband and I are pretty much on the same page after we watch a movie, but he obviously looked more kindly on this one than I did.