Eye Candy #173 - "Vantage Point"

Vantage Point: A frenetic thriller filmed “Rashomon”-style, where we get the same story told from a variety of viewpoints (there are at least five different POVs in the film) that fleshes out what really did happen. In “Vantage Point”, the context is an assassination attempt against the President by terrorists while visiting Spain. We get the perspective of the President, one of his Secret Service detail, one of the local policia, of the terrorists, a TV news crew, and a tourist who happens to be in the wrong place at the right time to be witness to the events. We aren’t given a lot of exposition as to who is doing what why, but the pacing on this thing is crazy – crap starts blowing up about 2 minutes in and it doesn’t stop running until 83 minutes later (and this film is SHORT). We've got a dependable cast with Dennis Quaid, Matthew Fox (of “Lost” fame), Forest Whitaker, William Hurt, and Sigourney Weaver in main roles. The problem with the film – so much exposition is left out, you barely have time to care about what is going on. It’s literally begun, in progress, and done within 15 minutes. I appreciate the adherence to pacing, but it has to be in the service of something othern than just the pacing itself. Plus, we’ve 1-2 perspectives too many. And what you do get to see, you’ve seen done before in better movies. Woodchuck sez, “May be up your alley, and it’s short.”