Vantage Point

Vantage Point is the sort of film that makes you want to run up to the director, shake him vigorously for ten minutes and say "Well? How do you like it?" There's a lot of shaky-cam. A lot*.

The film leans heavily on its use of showing the same event from eight points of view. In fact without this storytelling technique, it would be quite a dull film. Also a shorter film. The story is fairly compelling, although it's just not enough of a plot to fill the time on its own. It is filled with plot twists and cliffhangers. And when I say filled, I mean filled like a foot long Sub of the day with everything in it that's so big you get lockjaw trying to bite into it.

The constant cliffhanger and reset used throughout gets really irritating about half way through. I felt like I was watching an episode of Lost. "I'm never going to get any answers, am I?" was a nagging thought that kept popping up. The film seems to be an answer to the question nobody cared about; How many cliffhangers can you get in one film? It is constantly perforated with people looking at something out of camera shot going "Oh My God!" before rushing off and the focus immediately jumping to the next person. By about the fourth one of these I could hear the audience shifting in their seats and feel their frustration. Fortunately, the producer seems to be aware of how irritating this is and at about this point, the focus shifts into "more action, less faffing about".

After the twist in the middle (this isn't really a spoiler as there are so many twists), the film does pick up pace a lot, almost like it's looked at its watch and realised how little time is left before the end. However, this doesn't really make amends for torturing us with cliffhangers for the first half of the film.

I guess the moral of the story is that terrorists are quite happy to shoot hostages, assassinate presidents and blow up plazas full of people, but they won't run over small children or cute animals who have wandered into the road. So really, all we need to do is surround all our important buildings with small children and cute animals and they'll be perfectly safe. Also, the closer you stand to a bomb, the better your chances of survival with only a few cuts and bruises seem to be.

Score: C- A distinctly average plot bolstered by a tired and overused narration technique.

OQ: "Oh My God!"

*You can always tell the films where the city council refused to let them drive cars at high speed through the streets. They use shakycam to cover the fact that the "car chase" is being driven at 30 miles an hour.