Director – Pete Travis
Screenplay – Barry Levy
Plot **In the small town of Salamanca in Spain , there is a historical peace summit which is being attended by leaders of 150 countries. When it comes to the point where the president of USA (William Hurt) has to make the speech, 2 bullets are shot from the building and he is assassinated. After that there are a couple of bomb blasts which leave a few people dead and many injured. Vantage point shows the entire scene 6 times, from different perspectives of the characters.
1st version – Rex(Sigourney Weaver) is a news producer who is covering the summit live and is shocked to see the assassination live along with the twin blasts. Her perspective ends when the peson who is doing the live coverage, Angie(Zoe Saldana) dies in the bomb blast.
2nd Version – Secret Service Agent Thomas(Dennis Quaid) and Kent (Thomas Taylor) are on the watchout for any unwanted people or events during the speech when suddenly the president gets shot. Thomas finds out that there is something or someone behind the plot
3rd Version – Enrique(Eduardo Noriega) is a local cop who is assigned to guard the mayor of the city. He suspects his girlfriend Veronica(Ayelet Zurer) may be involved in the plot
4th Version – Howard (Forest Whitaker) is an American Tourist who has captured the entire event live on his handycam and Thomas has found out a key element in this plot.
5th Version – This is the version of the President himself and we get to learn that things aren’t exactly what it seems.
6th Version – This is the version of the terrorists who plot this assassination.
The aftermath is to find the persons behind the plot and the motive.
Critic’s Comments
The famous director Akira Kurosawa directed a movie called Rashomon in 1950 which was about a murder and different people having different versions of the same event. This type of filmmaking and storytelling came to be known as Rashomon style of filmmaking. Vantage Point is one of those films. The plot is very good and the versions are captured brilliantly. The acting is more or less ok but the action scenes and the cinematography by Amir Mokiri is very good. The movie falls after the 6 versions end and seem like your usual run of the mill movies but I would give this movie a 3 star rating just for the unusual style of narrative used.
Psst –
1) Vantage Point is a position or a condition or a place affording an advantage to the person.2) Although the actual budget of the movie was never revealed, it earned over $25 million world wide during the opening weekend.*
3) The filming started way back in June 2006 and was set for an October 2007 release but due to unknown reasons, the movie was postponed and released worldwide on 29th February 2008.
Quotes
1) “We must act strong; No, we must be strong.”
2) “The beauty of American arrogance is that they cannot imagine a world in which they are not a step ahead..”
3) “He doesn’t even look like me.”
Oops-
None that I could notice.