Reviews and More

The next new episode of Desperate Housewives isn’t scheduled to air until April 13, which is still more than one month away. The WGA strike has been over for weeks now… do you mean to tell me it really takes that long to write and produce a single episode of a television show? I find that hard to believe.

I hate watching reruns, so by now I’ve already forgotten most of what has happened on DH this season. I remember a few basic things, such as how Lynette’s cancer scare is over and how her family survived the tornado. I also remember that Susan forced Mike into rehab after discovering that he was hiding pills in his truck tool boxes, and that Gabby and Carlos are now penniless (but free to be together).

Oh, and Carlos has lost his sight after being hit by something during the tornado.

But other than that, I have absolutely no idea what else is going on. Maybe I should bite the bullet and watch some reruns before the new eps start airing. Or not (considering how much I’ve disliked the season so far).

One of the taglines for the new Pete Travis film Vantage Point says, “8 Strangers. 8 Points of View. 1 Truth.” By hearing this and watching the accompanying trailer, average moviegoers might reasonably assume that by the end of the film, that “1 truth” will be revealed. Had that happened, Vantage Point might have even turned out to be pretty decent.

Unfortunately, however, no real answers were forthcoming, which left me wondering what the point of the whole thing was.

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): The film opens inside a media trailer in Salamanca, Spain, where news producer Rex Brooks (played by Sigourney Weaver) is orchestrating coverage of an anti-terrorism summit where U.S. President Ashton (William Hurt) is scheduled to speak.

A few seconds after the President is introduced, however, he is gunned down by an unknown assassin. Chaos erupts immediately thereafter, with thousands of people screaming and running in all directions. Two explosions follow, leading to even mayhem as civilians try to escape and Secret Service agents try to locate the shooter.

Then, the director uses a hokey on-screen rewind effect to take viewers back to a few minutes before the shooting, and we once again see the events leading up to the assassination attempt — only this time things happen from the points of view of Thomas Barnes (Dennis Quaid) and Kent Taylor (Matthew Fox), two agents on the President’s security detail. Their points of view reveal a few additional details about what happened.

After that, we go through the same exercise several more times as the other viewpoints are revealed. We see things from the perspectives of a Salamanca police officer named Enrique (Eduardo Noriega); an American tourist named Howard (Forest Whitaker); President Ashton (where it is revealed that the man on the podium was in fact a body double); a former member of the special forces named Javier (Edgar Ramirez); and Suarez (Saïd Taghmaoui), the man behind the assassination attempt.

Through these different points of view, a few surprises are revealed, but nothing that ever approaches the single truth promised in the trailers.

My Reaction: I hate gimmicks that exist in films for no other reason than just to be, well, gimmicky. That’s precisely what was going on here with all of the different viewpoints. There wasn’t a real reason that these were necessary; it was just meant to be a gimmick.

Think about it: would the movie have suffered substantially if the time line had been linear and we stuck with, say, the Thomas Barnes character most of the way? There would of course have been a few cuts to the baddies or whatever, but for the most part the camera would stay on Barnes.

What would be different in the film? Nothing, except that it wouldn’t have this dumb gimmick, and the screenwriters would have had to come up with an actual 90-minute movie instead of a 20-minute movie disguised as a full-length feature film.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not complaining about the fact that there were flashbacks in the film. After all, that’s what I expected from the trailers. I’m complaining about the fact that they served zero purpose than to provide a storytelling gimmick that was wholly unnecessary.

Another thing I didn’t like about this film was all the terrible acting involved. I’m convinced now that Matthew Fox has no range at all, and is god-awful in almost every single role he plays. He sucks on Lost, he sucked on Party of Five, he sucked here… Remind me never to see another movie where this guy has a major part.

And finally, I’ll say once again that there was no definitive answer, no “1 Truth” given about the assassination/kidnapping plot. There were some vague references to how the President was standing in the way of progress or whatever, but nothing solid as to why everything went down the way it did. What a lame cop-out.

Overall, I thought Vantage Point was severely lacking in purpose and execution. While the general idea for this film might have sounded good on paper, it didn’t transfer well to the screen. I give this movie 3.5 stars out of 10, and recommend that you skip it.