Prospettive di un delitto

Dennis Quaid and William Hurt star in this action thriller with a twist (or better yet, gimmick): the events leading up to the attempted assassination of an American president who is visiting Spain are told from several individuals' points of view. These include Quaid as a Secret Service agent, Hurt as the president, Forest Whittaker as a camcorder-wielding tourist and Edgar Ramirez (a Javier Bardem lookalike) as a Spanish cop. Bruce McGill is the president's hawkish adviser. VANTAGE POINT is fine if you can take the constant rewinding of events to show them from each character's perspective. Personally, I would have preferred fewer rewinds. For my money, Whitaker's overly excited tourist walks away with the movie.

What can I say? This film is a gimmick film that relates the same event through the eyes of eight different characters that each hold a piece of the puzzle. The film stops and rewinds back to 20 minutes before the event for each character. It gets a little annoying because each time it stops, the audience is left on a cliffhanger which carries the film's tension into the next character.

As for what the film promises, it promises a good puzzle, suspense and intense action. It delivers on all accounts. This plot has twists and turns and is completely logical. Half way through this movie, if you think you got it all figured out, you haven't got a clue.

The action is fairly balanced through out the film and keeps the film moving. The car chase in this film is one of the better ones I have seen in a long long time. It had some shots in it that I think were a small homage of the original The Italian Job (1969) car chase scene.

Even though I personally thought that some of the characters were paper thin, many of the actors gave strong performances that made the characters believable. Forest Whitaker was the best. I had a little problem with Dennis Quaid's character, Secret Service Agent Thomas Barnes, starting out as the thinnest of all the characters but he grows in the film. Of course, Edgar Ramirez, Saïd Taghmaoui, and Eduardo Noriega were right on and make the film (but not as much as Whitaker).

The premise of this film makes a refreshing change from the ordinary style of mainstream movies.

I was lucky enough to watch it during an event of a company I work for. I really enjoyed this movie, because of it's editing, wonderful actors and full packed action.

The movie tells the same story from 8 different persepectives, most of them from a character view, makes the puzzle clear till the end. Some puzzle parts can be guessed but this makes the movie so fun to watch.

Matthew fox acting could be better, but the others are convincing. Cheers to Ayelet Zorer, an Israeli actress who surprises again with her beauty and acting.

If you like thriller, action and car chases all in same movie then this movie is for you.

Some reviewers make it out to almost be a B-movie, but it isn't, not by a long shot.

The story revolves around the assassination of the US president who is attending a counter-terrorism summit in Spain. The film is told from multiple viewpoints and the events that transpire within a 23-minute time frame, thus a Groundhog Day-like experience.

Vantage Point is really just an action film . . . pure and simple. When seeing this film, don't expect a complex and deep storyline; it certainly isn't that. The proper approach is to just take it for what it is. I liked this film because it had no pretensions. It didn't want to pretend that it needs to be over-analyzed by the viewer. There are no lengthy sub-plots and behind-the-back conspiracy pieces, no need to explain who is fighting for what cause. And if you approach with this frame of mind, then I assure you, you won't get bored or disappointed.

It's a movie that doesn't need to be analyzed ad nauseam. It doesn't care about needing to tie up lose ends and explain all the circumstances surrounding the assassination. Approach it from *that* "vantage point" and you'll appreciate it more.

I must admit I went into the theatre interested, but skeptical. Slowly, I got drawn into things, and by the time the we were at the fourth vantage point, I was fascinated by how all the stories interrelated with each other, and wondering the story would end up.

The acting is uniformly excellent, especially that of Dennis Quaid, who I had previously considered a mostly comic actor, but is very convincing here as a Secret Service agent.

The direction and script are also excellent, especially when you consider both are first-timers in the world of feature films. The script was not without its clichés, but I didn't see most of the plot twists coming, which I can usually spot coming a mile away in a film like this. There was one real groaner of a plot twist that you'd have to be an idiot not to see, but it goes by so fast that it doesn't really matter.

A lot of the audience in the screening I was at got frustrated by the repeated sections, obviously having no attention span. But once the third act of the film kicks into gear, everybody stopped complaining.

Speaking of which, the third act is the payoff which we've all been waiting for. Seeing all the plot threads converge in such a convincing matter was nice, as was the final action scene, which seems like it was plucked right out of one of the Bourne films. This comes as little surprise, since director Pete Travis and Bourne series director Paul Greengrass have worked together in the past.

As skeptical as I had gone in, I came out impressed. Not since The Bourne Ultimatum have I seen such a convincing, engrossing action thriller.