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Review: 'Vantage Point'
'Vantage Point'
Rated PG-13 for sequences of intense violence and action, some disturbing images and brief strong language
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This preposterous yarn relies on a quickly strained gimmick -- the shooting of the U.S. president shown over and over, from different characters' viewpoints -- to cover up the fact that it's less of a story than a commotion of human pool balls clattering against one another in ways that defy sense and even physics. The gimmick must have looked good on the page, as director Pete Travis rounded up a superb cast that includes Dennis Quaid, Forest Whitaker, Matthew Fox, Sigourney Weaver and William Hurt.
The repetitive segments gradually spell out the absurd machinations setting the assassination plot in motion while the president presides at a terrorism summit in Spain. At first, it's annoying as the action continually rewinds to play things back from another perspective. The ham-fisted manner in which the filmmakers present those transitions eventually becomes laughable, as do the outrageous plot twists.
• In wide release
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