Vantage Point

For a cleverly told action story you should look no further than Pete Travis’ Vantage Point, first released in 2008.

This is a story of a terror attack during what’s promised to be a historic counter-terrorism summit in Salamanca Spain, told from the perspective of 8 strangers, all of varying roles in society. Each of them have a different view of the attack and it becomes a race against time to stop the finale of the attack: the murder of the President of the United States of America (William Hurt).

What I love about this film is how it manages to tell the story from the different viewpoints and only reveal a bit with each person’s view. In fact you are kept guessing until the end, kept in tension until the truth is sprung. What’s more is the fast-paced action throughout does not give you a lot of time to figure it all out!

So just who are the 8 strangers? Well the first viewpoint is from that of the News Crew CNN. Then we have the President’s bodyguard Barnes’ (Dennis Quaid) viewpoint, then Enrique (Eduardo Noriega), a policemen who works for the mayor in, presumably, Salamanca, then we have Howard Lewis (Forest Whitaker), an American tourist who has come over to Spain to see the summit, recording everything on his hand-held camera, then we have President Ashton’s viewpoint and finally we get the viewpoint of the terrorists, who include Veronica (Ayelet Zurer), Suarez (Saïd Taghmaoui), Felipe, (Guillermo Iván) a member of hotel staff, a cameraman from the CNN, Taylor (Matthew Fox), Barnes’ partner, and Javier (Édgar Ramírez), who has been forced into this as Suarez has his brother hostage. Apart from the news crew and the couple that get killed along the way, they all end up meeting for the dramatic finale.

For me there was a few aspects of this film that didn’t work. For instance when the real President gets attacked it is by a masked guy. We later find out this masked guy is one of the terrorists, but he doesn’t put the mask on until just before walking into the room with the President in and after he has killed lots of people. This led me to believe that he was only masked in the first place so the viewing audience don’t know who it is until later…a poor attempt at trying to hide who is the bad guy here I think. But hey, I may just be picking holes here.

Another aspect which I know I’m not just picking holes in is the logic. At the end of the car chase scene Barnes and the car he is in gets crushed between a wall and a lorry, then he gets out of the wreckage relatively unharmed. Which is questionable, but nothing to really have a cow about…until his partner, Taylor, crashes his own car into a wall, gets seriously injured and dies of those injuries. Surely out of the two Barnes should be the worst hurt?

Criticism aside, there were some very enjoyable moments throughout this film including the explosion from the bomb under the podium (even though you see this particular scene over and over and over and over and ov-); the gun that shoots the President is remote-controlled (more like phone controlled), not actually needing a finger to pull the trigger; when Barnes takes the car to chase after Taylor he literally bundles the owner out onto the road; the car chase itself is brilliant, full of high paced action, bad driving, crashing, screaming and all round road rage; and finally the scene where Lewis saves little Anna from being hit by the ambulance, as it’s dramatic and cute all in one go.

And my favourite quotes from the film are:

• ‘Why don’t you leave the punditry to someone who’s paid to have an opinion?’ – Rex (Sigourney Weaver)
• ‘Unless the protestors set themselves on fire, they’re not our story.’ – Rex

To compare this film to other high-paced action films would not be fair, as it is the way this particular story is told that should be commemorated.

And that is why I am giving this film a 7.8 out of 10.

 

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