Vantage Point"" serves as a cautionary tale for anyone who thinks they have a fresh and brilliant take on film storytelling: If you're going to do something original, make sure it's watchable first.
The much-hyped ""original plot device"" used here is repeating the same event eight times while gradually and painfully uncovering new details with each iteration. The plot follows an assassination attempt on the president of the United States and the subsequent chaos as seen from the perspectives of eight different attendees. The attendees include a vacationing divorcee (Forest Whitaker), a news director (Sigourney Weaver), two Secret Service agents (Dennis Quaid and Matthew Fox) and the president himself (William Hurt).
These iterations would be interesting if they each revealed shocking new truths about the moment they repeat, but some just feel redundant and unnecessary. Each new ""vantage point"" shows little that wasn't in the initial scenes, and by the third time the president is shot, audiences are bored, not engrossed.
When the film finally takes its surprise turn about an hour into the movie, it devolves into one big long car chase to the ending that melts from the promised treat of unconventional storytelling into a goopy mess of clichés.
If the cast sounds crowded, that's because it is. For all of the big names in this project, not one of them manages to squeeze in enough screen time to carve even the roughest characterization. Take Quaid's character, a secret service agent who took a bullet for the president and returned to active duty to prove he wasn't too shaken up by the experience. The film is full of these one-sentence characters - each like the pawn in some protracted and contrived board game.
The other big names don't fare any better. Weaver's character has an interesting perspective from her seat in front of a bank of camera monitors, but she can't grab enough screen time to make it work. Whitaker is barely a character at all, mostly existing in the story to glue together some chance events that bring the film to its dumb-luck finale. The only actor benefiting from the lack of available screen time is Matthew Fox, who has less risk of exposure as a terrible actor.
The gimmick here serves no purpose but to help market an overly forgettable film - it serves neither the narrative nor the characters, which is what any good plot device should. When a ""unique"" film's most redeeming quality is the adrenaline pumping, cookie-cutter car chase finale, something has definitely gone awry between the writer's pen and the editing room.
At its best, the end product pulls away as a mediocre action flick that will be quickly forgotten. At its worst, ""Vantage Point"" is a chore to watch - bashing audiences over the head with not-so-subtle demands to dig deeper into the scene and not offering much in the way of a reward for the effort.
