The concept of the movie is really good, and stories of this ilk always get me interested. Basically, when the president gets shot at a huge peace conference, we will watch the events unfold from eight different perspectives. We will view the shooting from the Secret Service agent's perspective (played by Dennis Quaid), his partner (Matthew Fox), an average tourist (Forest Whitaker), a local cop (Eduardo Noriega), a former black-ops agent who is being blackmailed (Edgar Ramirez), the assassins (Ayelet Zurer and Said Taghmaoui), and even from the point of view of the President himself (William Hurt).
While the movie jumps perspectives a lot, the main focus is Quaid's character as he hunts down his various suspected assassins, but every time you turn around, he has some new revelation about the plans that were laid out to take out the President.
Like I said earlier, I typically like stories that show the same events from multiple perspectives. When done right, you will gain just a little bit more information with each re-watch and, if possible, even a particular slant on the events based on the character you are following (a perfect example of this is Jet Li's Hero). While you do get more knowledge with each perspective in Vantage Point, something just doesn't seem right and it almost feels like you are getting it all way too quickly. Quite frankly, it feels like the entire movie was meant to be viewed in standard chronological order, but some film-editor decided to put a spin on it and put all of the clips that followed a particular actor together in order to give the multiple-perspective feel. It just isn't done quite as well as other movies or books that have pulled this off.
The movie then has a completely different feel about 3/4 of the way through it when all the perspective switching stops so Quaid's character can chase the assassins through narrow streets in a very generic feeling car chase. It just feels like the last part of the movie belongs somewhere else and doesn't fit the suspense-filled events that preceded it.
As far as the acting is concerned, it was all pretty dead on. Quaid plays the patriotic part well, while Hurt does a good politician. I enjoyed Fox's role, but he really doesn't have a lot of screen time, and I'm always pleased to see Whitaker in a role. In general, the characters and plot are interesting enough to make you want to see the whole movie, but it isn't really worth any re-watchings.
I don't know if I feel as strongly about Vantage Point as Starscream, who told me in one conversation "No matter how you look at it, Vantage Point sucks," but at most, it is worth a rental.
