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Covering all angles
Nils van der Linden
Posted Fri, 04 Apr 2008
If eight people witness the same event, there might be eight different, but equally plausible, accounts of what happened. It’s called the "Rashomon effect" and should be as out of place in a dumb Hollywood action movie as Vin Diesel in an anthropology textbook.
But there it is all over 'Vantage Point', finally giving a new angle to the over familiar '24' universe of presidential assassinations, trigger-happy political advisers, frenetic car chases, terrorists with semi-automatic weapons, breathless on-foot pursuits, secret service men talking down their sleeves, risky abductions, double crosses, and all American heroes shouting into their cellphones.
After the US president is shot at a public engagement in Spain (the least implausible part of an otherwise wonderfully absurd story), the lives of eight strangers intersect during the hunt for the assassin. Each of these strangers — from an American tourist with a video camera obsession to a stupid little girl who obviously wasn’t paying attention during road safety lessons — provides a unique, uhm, vantage point of the unfolding action.
With every person getting their proverbial 15 minutes of fame, the relentless 'Vantage Point' effectively amounts to eight short, overlapping films — each ending on a cliffhanger — that push the story forward while leaving out vital pieces. Despite the annoying rewinds at the conclusion of each segment, the overall effect is captivating rather than frustrating — until all the story threads inevitably come together and reveal the kind of bang-bang-bang, high-octane Grande Finale you could easily have seen on a TV cop show last week.
And as the credits roll after a too-short 80 minutes, you realise that director Pete Travis and screenwriter Barry Levy used the Rashomon gimmick less for the inherent intrigue than to pad out their film. Replaying the same scene from different angles must have added at least five minutes to their still stingy running time — although, short of putting in even more characters, it's doubtful they could have stretched their ultimately ropey tale out any further.
Or maybe they just ran out of money to keep the big stars on the set — Forrest Whitaker as the camera obsessive; Dennis Quaid as the True Blue American secret agent guy; the always painful Matthew Fox as his sidekick; Sigourney Weaver as a bitchy TV news producer; and William Hurt as the dead guy.
With these stars and an interesting hook 'Vantage Point' has a lot of potential, but the end result is something of a disappointment — no matter how you look at it.
