Plot
The attempted assassination of the American President is told and re-told from several different perspectives.
Release Year: 2008
Rating: 6.6/10 (72,906 voted)
Critic's Score: 40/100
Director:
Pete Travis
Stars: Dennis Quaid, Forest Whitaker, Matthew Fox
Storyline The President of the United States is in Salamanca, Spain, about to address the city in a public square. We see a plain-clothes cop, his girlfriend with another man, a mother and child, an American tourist with a video camera, and a Secret Service agent newly returned from medical leave. Shots ring out and the President falls; a few minutes later, we hear a distant explosion, then a bomb goes off in the square. Those minutes are retold, several times, emphasizing different characters' actions. Gradually, we discover who's behind the plot. Is the Secret Service one step ahead, or have the President's adversaries thought of everything?
Cast: Dennis Quaid
-
Thomas Barnes
Matthew Fox
-
Kent Taylor
Forest Whitaker
-
Howard Lewis
Bruce McGill
-
Phil McCullough
Édgar Ramírez
-
Javier
(as Edgar Ramirez)
Saïd Taghmaoui
-
Suarez
Ayelet Zurer
-
Veronica
Zoe Saldana
-
Angie Jones
(as Zoë Saldana)
Sigourney Weaver
-
Rex Brooks
William Hurt
-
President Ashton
James LeGros
-
Ted Heinkin
(as James Le Gros)
Eduardo Noriega
-
Enrique
Richard T. Jones
-
Holden
Holt McCallany
-
Ron Matthews
Leonardo Nam
-
Kevin Cross
Opening Weekend: $22,874,936
(USA)
(24 February 2008)
(3149 Screens)
Gross: $151,161,491
(Worldwide)
Technical Specs
Runtime:
Did You Know?
Trivia:
In the original script, the tourist was a Russian named Lewicki. When Forest Whitaker auditioned for a different role, Pete Travis was so impressed that he rewrote the tourist as an American and offered the role to him.
Goofs:
Revealing mistakes:
When Howard films the scene around him, before the president is shot, a shot from behind reveals that the camcorder is switched off.
Quotes:
[first lines]
Mark Reinhart:
Good morning, America. It's now 12 noon in Salamanca, Spain. In a short time, world leaders from over 150 countries meet here in Plaza Mayor to sign up to President Ashton's bold new counterterrorist strategy. Since 9/11, more than 4500 people have been killed in the rising tide of global terror...
User Review
The all-seeing eye
Rating: 7/10
As the Bourne series raises the bar for action films, and audiences
balk at two-plus hour runtimes, the filmmakers of Vantage Point seem
like they are trying to bring a fresh, new, unconventional take on the
action/thriller genre. Though it may annoy some people, I felt the new
take turns Vantage Point into a taut terrorist thriller.
The new take or approach is jumping right into the moment (everything
is already planned out, people and weapons in place, etc.) of the
action and then telling it from eight different points of view. This is
where some people may be mildly irritated because after you see one
point of view everything is suddenly rewound and shown from the next
person's point of view (this is done six times) before they all
converge into a thrilling finale filled with one massive
adrenaline-fuelled car/chase sequence.
Because of the complex twists and turns of the plot and characters I
will be brief, very brief actually, on the plot. It starts with a TV
network covering a large gathering of leaders from all over the world
(including the President of the United States) who have come together
to form an alliance against the war on terror. At the beginning of this
meeting the US president is assassinated as he takes the stage, and it
begins replaying the assassination through all the different points of
view. The editing must be commended in this film as it blends all the
points of views so sophisticatedly you cannot help being engrossed, and
the star-studded cast includes Dennis Quaid, Mathew Fox, Forest
Whitaker, William Hurt, and Sigourney Weaver simply adds to everything.
In the theater I was watching some people called out their annoyance of
"again?!" on the fifth rewind, which I find amusing as the filmmakers
are simply trying to come up with something new in these sequel-ridden
times. And probably as those same people say Hollywood is "out of
ideas" they get angry when it tries something "different" and would
rather go spend their money on Spider-man 8.
I felt Vantage Point was an intelligent thriller, and yes it had its'
share of implausible plot points, but these were minor as the new
technique makes you feel like you have an all-seeing surveillance
system. I kind of felt like I was putting a puzzle together, piece by
piece, and as you see a new point of view it adds more to the story and
just when you think you have it figured out it changes again.
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