Consider Vantage Point two hours of your time well spent. During the first hour, director Pete Travis gives you a puzzle you must piece together. And when you're done, you spend the next hour sitting on the edge of your seat, travelling at breakneck speed as all the pieces come together in an explosive conclusion.
As explained in the posters, Vantage Point looks at one hour spent by the president of the United States and his convoy in a historic summit in Salamanca, Spain, from the point of view of eight different people. It starts from the most clueless — the news team beaming live from the summit venue — and moves on to the president being shot. From then on, the film shows you what happened, piece by piece, from the eyes of the president’s guards, a local cop, an ordinary man filming the event on his Handycam and finally goes on to the most clued in — the terrorists. From then, things fall into place and we’re led on a wild ride chasing the criminals through the streets of Spain, and trust me, you won't have a minute to breathe.
Very few directors have attempted starting a movie from the end and then winding back to the beginning, tricky as it is. But Travis has tried a new formula — cut up the first part of the movie into neat pieces and scatter them around. You’re sure to find your local audience groaning when the same scene is shown 5 different times, but that’s the beauty of it. There’s method in the scattering — all the different points of view shown happen at the same time. Imagine the number of cameras, in different directions, shooting 8 different stories at the same time. That is genius.If you are bright enough to see the brilliance of the director in the first part, you are rewarded with a splendid car chase in the next, and nail-biting action that will make you grip your samosa tight! No harsh camerawork here to make you nauseous. However, the wide angle has been used a tad too much, much to the discomfort of the short-sighted!
There are many heroes and villains in this movie — Matthew Fox and Dennis Quaid excel in these roles. Stalwarts like William Hurt and Forest Whitaker could have been used better; it seems like their pulp has been left untouched.In all, if you’ve got two hours with nothing to do, watch Vantage Point. You’ll wonder how fast time flew!
