Vantage Point (DVD)

At a meeting between Muslim and western countries in Salamanca, Spain the president of the United States is shot by an assassin. Secret service agent Thomas Barnes seeks to requisition all the available footage from a TV producer, her news crew and a tourist. When seen from all the available perspectives, it appears that all is not as it seems. What do the assassins want? Is the president really alive? What is the truth?

Director Pete ...
...shows in his big screen debut. It plays out like a TV movie that's struck lucky because it is prone to cinematic cliché and episodic pacing. The biggest bugbear I have with the director is the way he approaches the same events from myriad viewpoints. He employs a frustrating and hackneyed device whereby he gets to a certain point in a character's timeline then fades to white, spools back through key shots from their story, hits a blackout that shows ... more

At a meeting between Muslim and western countries in Salamanca, Spain the president of the United States is shot by an assassin. Secret service agent Thomas Barnes seeks to requisition all the available footage from a TV producer, her news crew and a tourist. When seen from all the available perspectives, it appears that all is not as it seems. What do the assassins want? Is the president really alive? What is the truth?

Director Pete Travis has previously only directed for television and his inexperience shows in his big screen debut. It plays out like a TV movie that's struck lucky because it is prone to cinematic cliché and episodic pacing. The biggest bugbear I have with the director is the way he approaches the same events from myriad viewpoints. He employs a frustrating and hackneyed device whereby he gets to a certain point in a character's timeline then fades to white, spools back through key shots from their story, hits a blackout that shows the time and/or date and starts the whole thing again from someone else's perspective. It's trying because he does it so often and by the second or third use, he had the audience I saw it with groaning. Every time you see the events, you get a smidgen more information, allowing you to build the larger picture of what's going on. But it's done in such a laborious fashion you'll give up caring before the film comes to a conclusion. It makes it virtually impossible to get to know or care about any of the characters. And it makes the film feel far longer than ninety minutes because you're constantly stopping and going back on yourself.

The way Travis shoots action is also problematic. There are a couple of key chase sequences in the story (one on foot and one in cars) the director chooses to shoot handheld. It might add immediacy to the scenes, but it makes it very difficult to see what's going on. In conjunction with the choppy editing it makes the sequences underwhelming. You could have the best stunt drivers in the world, but there's no point if you can't see what they're doing - it sucks the tension from the action. The director does better when shooting the human cost of the events, such as the aftermath of an explosion that is shot in grainy greys with the sound fading in and out as though there's ringing in your ears. It is reminiscent of his heartfelt work in TV movie "Omagh". However he falls into cliché by overlaying scenes of the dead and dying with short flashbacks of recent events for Barnes and close-ups of his eyes that signal that these are his thoughts. It's a hackneyed device that drains the emotion from the scene. It doesn't help that there are so many reaction shots of Dennis Quaid throughout the film as he has one of the most impassive faces I've ever seen, so you have no idea what he's thinking or how what he sees affects him. It looks like Pete Travis needs to think bigger if he's going to have a successful career in cinema.

The screenplay by newcomer Barry Levy focuses too much on structure and not enough on story. He's consumed by showing multiple perspectives of a single series of events but because those events are repeated so many times from different viewpoints, there's a lack of detail. For instance, who are the terrorists and what are they hoping to achieve by their actions? We never know what their specific cause is, how they're recruited or what they believe. The lack of detail also extends to the characterisation. Virtually all the players are defined by their jobs: TV producer, secret service agent, policeman, soldier. With the exception of Barnes, who we learn took a bullet for the president, there's no background to any of the players. So everyone feels like a plot device. This is certainly true of tourist Howard Lewis whose sole purpose is to follow other characters with his video camera to provide another contrived perspective as the story unfolds. The criminal mastermind behind everything feels like a lazy plot motor - he's too busy playing puppet-master with his palm-top computer to have a personality. There are too many characters, so you don't get to know any of them and when some are killed, you don't feel anything about their deaths. The story is riddled with contrivance as Levy scrambles to get as many bland viewpoints of key occurrences in as possible and then tries to tie all the subplots together come the end. Then it becomes abundantly clear how paper-thin some of the plot devices are, such as the little girl Anna. It's also a deeply unsatisfying ending because we don't get any answers to the big questions like who the terrorists are or what the bigger plan was. The dialogue is full of too many cryptic snatches of conversation to enthral.

It's a shame Dennis Quaid is the main focus of the action as Thomas Barnes because he has very little going for him. His face is a fixed frown throughout that makes him look constipated most of the time. He may be in good shape for his age, but doesn't have the presence or skills to convince as bodyguard to the president. His characterisation is too simplistic, making him a bare-bones faithful and true archetype. So simply following the guidelines set down in the script makes him implausibly indestructible.

No-one else gets a look-in in terms of characterisation, so everyone else feels like a bit-parter. It's a shame because it's a waste of a hell of a cast. Oscar-winner Forest Whitaker is a bashful, well-meaning do-gooder as Howard Lewis. The script doesn't allow Sigourney Weaver to expand the role of news producer Rex Brooks into anything other than a snappy career woman. Matthew Fox is nothing more than a square-jawed plot device as Kent Taylor. William Hurt tries to bring some gravitas to the under-written part of President Ashton but is short-changed buy the screenplay. Meanwhile Eduardo Noriega tries hard as Spanish policeman Enrique but proves little other than he can run and Said Taghmaoui is given yet another thankless specious Middle Eastern role as Suarez.

The original music by Atli Örvarsson, like the rest of the film, is plagued by repetition. The main culprit is a string refrain with piano undertones and brushed cymbal that crops up every time a new piece of the puzzle drops into place. But there is the sense that you've heard everything before because of his generic thriller arrangements that are usually two parts strings to one part percussion. There are the obvious sad strings when people die and just in case you hadn't twigged that the bad guys are somehow connected to middle-eastern terrorists, there are Arabic pipes to remind you. In fact the only moment of originality in the score comes in Örvarsson's use of electronic music in an attack on a hotel. Otherwise it's rather bland and lazy.

"Vantage Point" is a generic thriller undermined by its central conceit. Constantly going back to the beginning so we can see various characters' perspective on events is an annoying and distracting device that only serves to make the underwhelming payoff even more disappointing. The characterisation is virtually non-existent, the story patchy at best and the action shoddily shot. The direction is limp and the performances weak, wasting a cast of usually reliable thespians. It's a thriller without thrills that may work better on the small screen but will never be more than mediocre. 

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