It turns out Jack Black and Mos Def didn't have a "rewind" monopoly this past weekend. The box-office topper Vantage Point could have as easily been titled Be Kind Rewind: Political Thriller Edition. Vantage shirks good old-fashioned linear progression, although this is far from typical Tarantino anachronism (both in practicality and artistry). The film tracks six characters through roughly a 30-minute period. It locks you, as the title suggests, into the vantage point of one of the six before freezing, zipping back and starting the scenario afresh with a different face. It's a clever-enough concept, but the film flounders between exploring the tropes of its unique selling point and going for more traditional action-flick thrills.
Sigourney Weaver gets things off to a promising enough start as a GNN (yes, that's 'G'NN) newscast director covering an anti-terrorism summit in Spain. When Weaver ignores pleas from a reporter to show "both sides of the story" and cover a protest outside the summit, the de facto moral is introduced -- stories change drastically depending on the extent of the perspective you're offered.
Unfortunately, this is as revelatory as Vantage gets. Soon the summit, headlined by U.S. President "Ashton" (William Hurt), hits the expected and explosive derailment. In the ensuing rewinds and character hops the perspective-play becomes little more than a half-baked pressure cooker. Whenever the tension or action hits a certain pitch, the fade-to-white rewind inevitably kicks in. Far from leaving you thirsting for more, the character swaps tend to bring any intensity to a screeching halt. Just when you consider caring about a character or situation, it's suddenly shelved for a much less interesting one.
Which brings me to the film's other glaring fault: extremely uneven performances from a bloated cast. Weaver, along with Dennis Quaid, cast as a troubled Secret Service agent, and Hurt's president, offer admirably watchable performances. Things devolve from these three, and most notably with Forest Whitaker. Whitaker almost can't help but be a good actor. His character, however, is such a one-note throw away -- he spends his 20 minutes alternating focus between a little girl and a camera - there's precious little depth to force into the showing. The film's next most notable star, Mathew Fox (perhaps better known as Jack of Lost), does his best "look, Ma! I can do movies too," but his acting range only spans the emotional jumps between cocky, worried and manic.
Then there's the rest: a Spanish cop (Eduardo Noriega) and a smattering of terrorists. Noriega seems to have wandered in off a Spanish soap opera, and the terrorists are almost completely flat villains. The lack of any antagonistic depth proves especially apparent in a film that purports to ride on "multiple perspectives." Vantage never divulges a clear rational behind the terrorists' on-screen wickedness (they're terrorists; of course they don't need motivation!). They're cold. They're calculating. They're scary. That's about it.
It's not all bad. When Vantage finally embraces the more regular pacing of an action movie it offers a pretty spectacular car chase and it gets a few points for grazing some political hot buttons. Just don't expect too much. For all its visual showboating and plot mix-ups the film boils down to one overarching perspective: It's all from the eyes of a cheap political thriller.3
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