Vantage Point – A brief review.

As originally posted on imdb.com

I’ve read a lot of negative remarks on this board from folks who didn’t enjoy the flick. One must remeber: The joy of going to the movies is to try and immerse yourself into that picture for two hours or so, not to pick apart people’s attempts to make flicks that say something. I think that the filmmakers were trying to establish the fact that International warefare and epionage is something that will always happen, no matter how much people what to protect themselves and their families, there are things going on in governments around the world that the public has no realised or explained knowledge of, hence the first ‘Vantage Point’ of the flick: the news director played by Sigourney Weaver. This first glimpe is the end result in what the public around the world will ever know about the situation presented in the movie, and as the flick progresses and we delve deeper into what actually happened we begin to realize that corruption can get to the deepest parts of government. I think that’s ultimately what the writers were trying to say with this movie.

People also need to remember that the real time frame for this picture is only about twenty minutes, and that most of the people involved don’t realize they are interconnected in any way. Some folks want resolution with backstory on Matthew Fox’s character. All I can present is this. If he was rogue and working as a double agent and the President didn’t know about it, he couldn’t have done it alone. Which means that the operation was even bigger than we, as moviegoers, could imagine or saw on screen. Perhaps the Presidential advisors who immediately wanted to order a strike on Morocco after the attempt were possibly in on the kidnapping, then deemed disposable after they were done with thier job, or rather failed to do their job at all. Perhaps they were able to keep Fox’s character under the radar the whole time, as they were in charge of assigning the Secret Service agents to the President in the first place.

People are too eager to jump on the internet and dissuade others from seeing a flick before they’ve had adequate time to think about the movie on many levels.

I actually really enjoyed this movie. It offered an escape for about two hours, was exciting and fast, and it made me think about how corrupt our world governments can be.

As far as the structure of the film — while I did find the ‘rewinding’ a bit tedious during the viewing, I also realize that, ultimately, it’s the best way to tell this story. Again the real time frame is only about twenty minutes, and this structure enables the flick to present eight different ‘Vantage Points’ of that specific twenty minutes. After the movie ended, I realized that it had to be that way.

So, if you dig movies, seriously check this flick out. It’s a nice escape for an evening.