Akira Kurosawa’s 1950 film, Rashomon, features one of the most borrowed/refigured/ripped-off/homaged plot structures in the history of movies. In it, a heinous crime is committed. Four people have witnessed the crime. Each one tells their own version of events. Each person has a different perspective on things. In the end, which version, if any, is “the truth”?
 Even the discerning scowl on Dennis Quaid’s face can’t stop a bullet from finding the President (William Hurt, center) in the dizzying, dull flick, Vantage Point. |
Vantage Point is the latest film to bend Kurosawa’s groundbreaking (at the time) framework to its own purposes. This version presents us with a ripped-from-the-headlines crime. In Spain to attend a historic political summit aimed at ending global terrorism, the President of the United States (amusingly referred to as “POTUS” throughout the film) is assassinated by an unknown killer’s bullet.
Capturing this tragic event on tape are the cameras of an international news crew camped out at the site. A harried network producer (Sigourney Weaver) tries to figure out what just happened, but her efforts are ended by a bomb that rips through the plaza, killing an on-air reporter and countless others.
| Trailer for Vantage Point. |
Following that, the film rewinds (how clever), taking us back in time 20 minutes to show us the “vantage point” of yet another witness. In time, we get a shell-shocked Secret Service agent (Dennis Quaid), a goggle-eyed tourist (Forest Whitaker), a lovelorn Spanish cop (Edgar Ramirez) and at least three others. The film rewinds six times, giving us a total of seven different versions of the same tale. Each person allegedly has one additional clue as to what really happened. The film never bothers to share any of these clues with the audience, setting up the main problem with any film that tries to replicate Rashomon—namely, it’s not worth paying attention to the first few stories, since you know you won’t learn the “true” story of what happened until the final flashback.
As you might expect, it gets a bit boring watching the same events over and over (and over and over and over and over) again. Instead of giving us a totally different perspective and, therefore, a wholly different take on the story each time, the film just keeps repeating the same tale, filling in a few gaps it neglected to inform us about the time before. It’s kind of like listening to your senile grandfather tell a story: “Oh, wait. Did I forget to mention the building was on fire? Let me start over.”
The biggest problem is not that Vantage Point wastes so much time in telling its tale, but that it ends up going virtually nowhere. Those toughing it out in search of an answer will find none. Who are these terrorists trying to kill the POTUS? Why are they doing it? What’s behind it all? Moroccans? The Vice President? Aliens? The film never bothers to clarify. Aside from a couple of thoroughly expected twists, the film’s narrative peters out, stranding us with one of the most frantic cop-out endings in recent memory.
It seems like a lot of work went into the surface concept of Vantage Point—from the fractured storyline to the Cloverfield-esque videography to the Bourne Identity-like action scenes. Too bad nobody paid as much attention to foundations like acting, directing and plotting. No matter what perspective you choose to look at it from, Vantage Point is a mediocre political thriller told in a confusing and ultimately pointless manner.