Vantage Point

Dennis Quaid plays a Secret Service agent who’s accompanying President Ashton (William Hurt) to a public appearance for an important speech about peace and terrorism. The agent took a bullet for the President once before, but this time there’s nothing he can do. Just before the speech, someone shoots the U.S. leader in the chest.

Vantage Point bills itself as a high-concept film, because after the shooting and subsequent mayhem, the movie rewinds 23 minutes to show us the same events from a different character’s perspective, and it rewinds again for another perspective, and so on, to see just how much nonsense we can take.

The concept itself sounds workable in an energetic, Run Lola Run sort of way, but even without the psychological or philosophical depth of multiple-viewpoint movies like The Conversation or Rashomon, a fun puzzle of a movie still requires precise timing and rigorous attention to detail. For all of its faults, No Country For Old Men proves that meticulous logic alone can propel a movie for a thrilling hour.

But a film that thwarts logic at every turn leaves us in the lurch, because the events we’re supposed to care about can never properly line up. It’s a puzzle cut by a drunken, three-fingered jigsaw operator who lost a few pieces and chewed on a few others.

Stripped of all reason, Vantage Point relies instead on noise, fast editing, a score recycled from 24, and convoluted twists concocted by filmmakers who seem disinterested not only in timing and detail but also, eventually, in their film’s idea, as if pointless vantages had been grafted onto a linear story solely to dress it up for the trailer.