Movie Review - Vantage Point

Yesterday Craig and I saw the movie "Vantage Point." The movie has a fairly star-studded cast and the premise sounded interesting. It is the story of an assisination attempt on the President of the United States while he is preparing to give a speach to kick off a world-wide conference against terrorism.

It begins with GNN, a TV news station, covering the event. We see the different camera angles and are in the production trailer watching as they set up the story for consumpion by the American public. Then it all goes crazy when two shots are fired at the President and shortly after a bomb goes off, causing more damage to the area where the President had been.

Then we begin to learn what is really going on as the story is retold several times, each from a different perspective, or vantage point, as the name of the movie indicates. It was a different way to tell the story, I thought, unwrapping the layers of deception and conspiracy and heroism slowly as those 20 minutes are retold over and over. But, after about the third view point we were starting to wonder how many times they could really tell the same story. The good thing was just as we were starting to get a bit bored by seeing the same story again, it picks up, showing more behind-the-scenes things that we did not see in the first few times the story is told.

Overall I thought the movie was OK. Not great, but not horrible. If you are looking for an action movie that can distract you for a couple of hours, this will do the trick. Craig and I both found bits of the movie predictable, so there were not a lot of unexpected or unpredictable twists. I think had they done something more unpredictable it would have made the film a little bit better. But the acting and pace of the film were good and the storytelling, while predictable, was also believable. There are plenty of tense moments and high-speed action scenes, so if you like action movies, this one isn't bad.