When the President of the United States is shot during a summit in Spain, the lives of eight witnesses, each with a different perspective on the shooting, collide.

CRITIQUE

There’s no doubt in my mind that first-time screenwriter Barry L. Levy sold his script for Vantage Point based solely on the concept. Much like Courage Under Fire or Basic, Vantage Point takes the old Rashomon concept of multiple viewpoints leading to the truth and applies it to a specific genre, this time the political action-thriller. But this movie is all concept and nothing else. Once you move beyond the central conceit, the movie falls completely apart.

If you saw any of the previews for this movie, you’re likely already aware of many of the characters who factor into the plot. These include a veteran Secret Service agent (Dennis Quaid), his younger partner (Matthew Fox), a news producer (Sigourney Weaver), and a camcorder-happy tourist (Forest Whitaker).

Their takes on the stories are intercut with those of a Spanish cop (Eduardo Noriega), his duplicitous lover (Ayelet Zurer), an ex-soldier (Edgar Ramirez), and a terrorist whose motives remain largely unclear (Saïd Taghmaoui). And if you saw the previews you’re also likely aware of a big story twist involving the President (who’s play by William Hurt), a twist that comes roughly thirty minutes in.

I have no idea why the decision to give away this twist was made. Maybe it was assumed that most audience members would be miles ahead of the movie, guessing what was ahead long before each successive turn on the plot comes roaring down the pike. It’s certainly not hard to figure out what’s coming. Levy and director Pete Travis (whose career up until now has consisted largely of work for the BBC) telegraph their every move, lingering too long on characters and their expressions and making it obvious that no encounter between characters is simply a coincidence.

I think it’s telling that although the movie doesn’t reveal one character’s true role in the assassination plot until fifteen minutes before the end credits roll, I figured it out roughly ninety seconds after the character first appeared. And if that’s what you can expect, why bother sitting through the whole thing?

Despite the best efforts of master editor Stuart Baird, Vantage Point quickly becomes boring and repetitive. Baird cut the movie in a way that even Michael Bay and Tony Scott might view as overkill, with many shots lasting less than two or three seconds. But it gets wearying after a short time, as does the jumping between, well, vantage points.

Travis’s technique in transitioning between points of view involves quickly rewinding the footage we’ve just seen, fading to black as we return to the same chronological starting point, then fading in on a different character. One instance of this is passable, twice is overkill, and anything beyond this invites derision and annoyance. 

Vantage Point doesn’t strive for any sort of realism, but it’s virtually impossible to accept it even on the level of goofy escapism. I have enormous respect for Whitaker as an actor, but he’s not exactly svelte, so watching him chase after well-trained Secret Service agents--his camera conveniently held aloft to capture the action the whole time--was a bit hard to swallow (I kept expecting him to have a heart attack, or at the very least pass out), and his superhuman ability to move faster than a speeding car is even harder to swallow. (And why doesn’t he have even a scratch on him after the bomb goes off? People lying all over the place with bellies full of shrapnel and debris and Whitaker’s shirt isn’t even dirty.)

The terrorists’ sudden shifts from shrewd and clever to incredibly dumb whenever the script calls for it are laughable; the idea that anyone who could come up with a scheme this elaborate and ingenious would also make the boneheaded mistake presented in the late innings here is preposterous. (Speaking of the terrorists, does anybody know where I can get one of those nifty little universal remotes they use? I want to scare my neighbors by messing with their appliances.)

And then there’s the ending, in which all of the surviving characters, regardless of whether they’re on foot or in a car, violate practically every law of physics (to say nothing of logic) and arrive at the same location pretty much simultaneously. That’s funny, but it’s nowhere near as funny as the climactic bit of ass-kicking that looks like an outtake from a direct-to-video sequel to Air Force One. It’s so unintentionally funny I was gasping for breath while watching it.

At the end of the day, this is simply another example of C-level (at best) material attracting an A-level cast. But as is usually the case, the cast cannot save it or even elevate it very much. In fact, I’d say Vantage Point would have been more enjoyable had it attracted the sort of cast is really deserves. For instance, give Steven Seagal the Quaid role, put Wesley Snipes in Whitaker’s part, and make Jesse Ventura the president. Now that would really be something special.

THE VIDEO

Vantage Point hits Blu-ray sporting a demo-worthy 2.40:1/1080p transfer. Contrast runs ever so slightly hot, but the video retains a largely natural appearance, with richly saturated colors and deep blacks. Detail is very impressive, and the image displays a consistently three-dimensional quality. Combine this with a completely natural grain structure and you end up with an outstanding, truly film-like transfer.

THE AUDIO

The Dolby TrueHD 5.1 audio would also be demo-worthy were it not for one significant flaw. Surround use is sustained throughout; when discreet and directional effects aren’t present, music and ambient sounds fill the rears. Bass action is often thunderous; gunshots have enormous heft, the explosion that caps many of the segments packs a wallop, and the third-act car chase is a sonic dream.

Unfortunately, dialogue is virtually drowned out by the other elements in several scenes. The action will start and suddenly anything being said by the actors is lost in the cacophony, and turning up the volume to make out what’s being said only compounds the problem.

Additional soundtracks include French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Thai Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround. Optional subtitles are available in English, English SDH, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Korean, Thai, and Chinese (Simplified or Traditional).

THE EXTRAS

The commentary with director Pete Travis is, for the most part, very dull, with the director doing little more than recapping the plot and/or describing what’s currently happening. On occasion he does dig into the nuts and bolts of the production, but these are rare occasions. 

Surveillance Tapes: Outtake is a very brief (we’re talking less than a minute), very unfunny movie-related gag.

An Inside Perspective: Interviews with the Cast and Crew (25 minutes) is a fairly standard making-of featurette. The expected this-movie-is-going-to-be-great interviews with the cast and crew are mixed with some behind-the-scenes footage from the shoot (which took place in Mexico, not Spain, which explains why the word “barrio” keeps appearing in background graffiti). 

Plotting an Assassination (15 minutes) supplies an overview of the characters and a look at how their individual stories intertwine. 

Coordinating Chaos (8 minutes) covers the movie’s stuntwork, with its primary focus being the aforementioned car chase (which at times is a carbon copy of the central car chase in The Bourne Identity).

Vantage Viewer: GPS Tracker is a Picture-in-Picture feature that tracks the movements of the different characters during the course of the movie, with color-coded icons identifying where each character is and the actual PiP material providing a glimpse at what select characters are doing at any given time.

FINAL THOUGHT

Unless you like you thrillers obvious, forced, contrived, and laughably ludicrous, you’ll want to skip Vantage Point.