Vantage Point

[DSNT]

http://www.apple.com/trailers/sony_pictures/vantagepoint/

Looks like Rashomon meets Michael Bay. :crazy:

[Henry Gale]

It seems like this trailer has been out forever without it being released. I swear Matthew Fox filmed this thing back around the time he did We Are Marshall. But I actually think it could be pretty decent as I really like almost everyone in the cast even though it isn't the most original premise.

Plus the director's name is just a couple of letters away from allowing this whole thing to be "sizzling"! Could it be a terribly uninventive alias of our favourite critic?

[MadMan]

For some wacked out reason the trailer refuses to work for me when I clicked on one of the trailer options on the site. I don't know whether to blame my crappy wireless or wonder if I need to have something installed to be able to view the trailer.

[Ezee E]

I really wish they didn't reveal a big twist in the movie.

[eternity]

It looks like it can be a decent thriller that seems to come almost every year in the dead throwaway months. Or it can just suck. Probably the latter.

[Sxottlan]

A decent film. I realized after the first couple takes on the events in those 23 minutes that it was done mostly because there's darn little to the story. Just one pass at the plot and it'd be done in half an hour. As it is, I don't think there are as many passes as the trailer made it sound. It was more like four or five instead of eight. The noticeable lack of a sequence for one particular character does stand out for good reason.

As it is, ultimately seeing the attempted assassination and bombing through all the different vantage points really didn't add up to anything. We do get to spend some more time with individuals from the ensemble cast, but it's only with the Dennis Quaid and Forest Whitaker characters that we feel that we're seeing real people reacting to these events. Even then though, the film cheats by putting the Quaid sequence second in order, but then has a major plot twist that he sees but we do not.

It was pretty apparent that it was the director's first film. For all the different takes and angles, there just wasn't enough camera coverage. For example some of the shots from Whitaker's camcorder were the same as objective shots, just with a timecode put over it which always bugs me. There should also have been more coverage of the bombing since we see it so many darn times. There were a lot of unnecessary stylistic flourishes, like with the rewinding of a character's sequence. Usually heard the audience shift and grumble at each one. The climax is also pretty overwrought and I really didn't care for how the film put a child in danger to ramp up the tension even further; a child that felt like a plot device more than anything else to begin with.

But the good stuff: a pretty tense thriller. The feeling of total chaos comes across as very real. The way the news crew conducted itself was pretty accurate. I've had to keep an on scene reporter from crying moments before a live shot too. The action scenes are well executed. Quaid, Whitaker, Hurt and Weaver are all pretty good. Conversely, the female villain is pretty terrible.

So worth a look.

[MadMan]

I first saw the trailer for this film when I went to see Rambo last month. Immediately after seeing the trailer I thought "This looks like crap." I'll rent it and give it a chance but many of the reactions critics wise to this seem to be confirming my suspicions.

[Ezee E]

I first saw the trailer for this film when I went to see Rambo last month. Immediately after seeing the trailer I thought "This looks like crap." I'll rent it and give it a chance but many of the reactions critics wise to this seem to be confirming my suspicions.
That was the first time you saw it? I swear I've seen it repetitively over the past year, with it being delayed six months.

[MadMan]

That was the first time you saw it? I swear I've seen it repetitively over the past year, with it being delayed six months.I saw Rambo last month, at the very beginning of January. The massive ad campaign for Vantage Point didn't start until around then. Since then yeah I've seen the previews for it a million times. Each time my opinion remains the same.

[Thirdmango]

I just barely saw this movie, and I actually really liked it. In part due to the fact that I went in thinking it was going to suck. Cause it did suck, but I wasn't expecting anything good out of it and I did get some good out of it. It was entertaining in the fact that I wasn't bored, they gave me some good action the whole time, and the car chase was phenomenal. I felt much the same emotions when watching a movie like Dead Or Alive. Just happy to see all the insanity.

[Teecee]

A bad movie, but a good bad movie because it's just the right amount of over the top.

And although I'm not a big fan of Dennis Quaid I'll say this - following this movie (and particularly that car chase), his bad-ass rating went up a couple notches.