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The first 15 minutes of Vantage Point are the worst.
Then you only have to sit through them seven more times.
In critical circles, this is what we call an issue.
Or at least the funniest movie of the year.
In fact, this ridiculous, 'roided-up hybrid of 24 and Groundhog Day -- okay, that probably wasn't how it was pitched precisely in the boardroom -- may well be the first exercise in full-bore cinematic insanity I've seen. (Well, at least since I Know Who Killed Me which just announced the sequel: I Know Who Has My Nude Marilyn Monroe Photos As Their Screensaver.)
Why? Because it does the same thing over and over again, expecting filmgoers to hope for a different result.
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Eventually it comes. It's called the end. Before that though it pinballs humourlessly around like Britney Spears between psych wards.
A blatant riff (yes, that means rip-off) of Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon -- which retold a crime from conflicting points of view -- Vantage Point centres upon the shooting of U.S. President Ashton (William Hurt) during an anti-terrorism summit in Spain.
The events leading up to and following the sniper attack -- including a lethal bomb blast -- are first told, rather grippingly, from the point of view of a hardened TV news producer (Sigourney Weaver). It doesn't last long -- the grip, I mean.
From here, director Pete Travis introduces the movie's signature conceit, literally rewinding back to the beginning of the events culminating in the assassination -- as told from the perspectives of varying characters that happen to be simultaneously converging on the town square.
Among them: a pair of U.S. Secret Service agents (Dennis Quaid and Matthew Fox), a camcorder-wielding tourist (Forest Whitaker), a local cop (Eduardo Noriega), a femme fatale (Ayelet Zurer), a bystander (Said Taghmaoul) and a soldier (Edgar Ramirez).
Throughout, logic, plausibility and character depth are back-burnered in favour of velocity without much excitement, gimmickry without any purpose.
And considering it's a so-called pulse-pounder, it feels oddly inert. For that, you can probably blame the time-spanning storytelling which, just as a shudder of momentum takes hold, frustratingly slam-cuts to the next concurrent segment, usually off some giggle-inducing cliffhanger.
The reason for the ferocious over-direction -- the editing is enough to give Michael Bay epilepsy -- is obvious: to disguise the pedantic screenplay.
Moreover, because the movie refuses to catch its breath, there is scant opportunity for audiences to identify with -- or care about -- the cavalcade of divergent participants.
Nevermind, either, the multitude of eye-rolling absurdities, such as how, in a crowd of thousands, do the same scarce half-dozen characters keep brushing into each other?
Indeed, since so much of the film is wasted re-establishing events we've already seen transpire (albeit from differing angles), there's little to think about other than the gaffes in common sense.
And possibly the location of the nearest exit.
(This film is rated 14-A)