MOVIE REVIEW - Vantage Point

Sometimes you buy your ticket and settle in for what you hope will be a really good and interesting movie. Vantage Point is not that movie.

I have to admit the whole idea of Vantage Point seems good enough at first glance. This movie stars a ton of well-known Hollywood actors, but in the end there are no real "performances" here. It's kind of a concept piece. It's the story of a tough-on terror American President who is assassinated in Spain as part of a world summit on terror. The assassination scene is then told over and over again from different points of view from various eyewitnesses. I was interested.

But as Vantage Point unveils, the story becomes 100% unbelievable - and that's a shame. The idea was good enough. Just a footnote, if you are uncomfortable with an anti-American message and agenda, than Vantage Point will not be an enjoyable night out.

In Vantage Point, the inept, bumbling, grey haired, top departments of our government are easily infiltrated and compromised by the highly sophisticated, very attractive, young terrorists that make killing the President look easy. Amazingly a group of 4, almost without incident are way smarter and more organized than the Secret Service and the executive branch of the government combined. Plus at the conclusion, Vantage Point takes a story changing twist that is almost laughable. I'll leave it at that.

They then cram all this action into about 90 chaotic minutes. Chaotic being the operative word. I think too the movie makers thought they were making a "smart thinking-mans movie." They didn't. If you can grasp the flash-back formula, (and who can't) you don't have to do a lot of thinking here.

To it's credit it Vantage Point does zip along with good pace and they don't weigh it down with a love story side plot that sometimes accompany movies like this. Vantage Point should have been better. The idea was there. The actors were there. The budget was there. Sadly, it just doesn't work.