Vantage Point

Eight strangers with eight different points of view try to unlock the one truth behind an assassination attempt on the president of the United States.

Director: Pete Travis

Genre: Action, Drama, Thriller

Cast: Dennis Quaid, Matthew Fox, Forest Whitaker, Sigourney Weaver, William Hurt, Edgar Ramirez, Zoe Saldana

I took about half the day off to make up for a holiday I wasn’t able to take because of a training class. It’s been sprinkling rain since about 11 a.m., which is actually pretty nice, so I decided to see an afternoon movie. I find that’s a great way to really feel like you’re playing hooky.

Obviously, the movie I selected was Vantage Point. These sorts of political thriller, terrorism plot films are generally fairly formulaic. Vantage Point took something of a unique approach to presenting the complete story. The story actually starts at what might be considered the middle of the film, and then telling it from eight different points of view. Be warned, this could be mildly irritating for some people because after you see one point of view everything is suddenly rewound and shown from the next person’s point of view (this is done six times) before they all converge into a finale filled with one adrenaline-fuelled car/chase sequence.

I admit it was a bit cumbersome, and I was growing impatient, but by the fourth “rewind,” I was totally into the story, and it did have a lesson about how we each perceive what is going on around us. I’m rating the move about a seven.

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