2008 Woodie Awards
"Vantage Point" completely pointless
Seth Miller/ Online Reporter
Issue date: 2/29/08 Section: in Review(s)
Hello fellow moviegoers, I must say it is good to be back on Pounce doing reviews and you should expect more from us at Pounce Online.
But enough chit chat, let's get down to business. This week, I'll be reviewing the new film "Vantage Point". This movie was number one at the box-office this weekend and I have got to ask, what was the rest of America thinking? This movie should not have made number one at the box-office, this barely qualifies as a movie.
The plot for this movie should be able to qualify as a pretty good thriller or at least an okay whodunit, but instead the creators if this movie realized the writer of this script probably quit to go on strike. So they come up this gimmick of showing the same event that makes up the movie, in this case the President of the United States (played by William Hurt) is assassinated at an anti-terrorist conference in Spain.
The whole thing is played out following what individual people saw in the 30 minutes leading to the assassination. The people we see this from are two Secret Service agents (Dennis Quaid and Matthew Fox), an American tourist (Forest Whitaker), a news producer (Sigourney Weaver), and at least four other people. The audience is given a glimpse at what these people see. And are supposed to figure out is going on from these viewpoints.
I'm all in favor of the audience using their brains while they are watching movies. However, I believe this is just some gimmick by the filmmakers to make the audience think that they are using there intelligence, but what is really happening is that they are given a movie that if it ran like a normal movie would last only 35 minutes and have moviegoers demanding their money back.
I don't mind disjointed movies that are supposed to add up as long as they are done with some grace and finesse. This had about as much grace and finesse as trying to perform brain surgery with one hand and hammer.
While there are some thrills, they are quickly forgotten after the film switched views. The filmmakers try to make it better near the end with a twist and car chase. The car chase is very entertaining but the twist has no real reason for happening.
It seemed as though the filmmakers thought, "Well we have this really crappy script and gimmick about seeing the same thing over and over again from a different view that is very stupid, let's throw in a twist to make it seem like we had a bigger plan all along." This movie has one or two good thrills and a nice car chase, but no development in terms of story or characters and the whole thing just seems to be an exercise to see how many times you can do an idiotic gimmick until it just becomes pointless (the answer is twice, the other six times they did it took 15 points of the IQ of everybody in the theater).
I give this film one and a half out of five stars.
But enough chit chat, let's get down to business. This week, I'll be reviewing the new film "Vantage Point". This movie was number one at the box-office this weekend and I have got to ask, what was the rest of America thinking? This movie should not have made number one at the box-office, this barely qualifies as a movie.
The plot for this movie should be able to qualify as a pretty good thriller or at least an okay whodunit, but instead the creators if this movie realized the writer of this script probably quit to go on strike. So they come up this gimmick of showing the same event that makes up the movie, in this case the President of the United States (played by William Hurt) is assassinated at an anti-terrorist conference in Spain.
The whole thing is played out following what individual people saw in the 30 minutes leading to the assassination. The people we see this from are two Secret Service agents (Dennis Quaid and Matthew Fox), an American tourist (Forest Whitaker), a news producer (Sigourney Weaver), and at least four other people. The audience is given a glimpse at what these people see. And are supposed to figure out is going on from these viewpoints.
I'm all in favor of the audience using their brains while they are watching movies. However, I believe this is just some gimmick by the filmmakers to make the audience think that they are using there intelligence, but what is really happening is that they are given a movie that if it ran like a normal movie would last only 35 minutes and have moviegoers demanding their money back.
I don't mind disjointed movies that are supposed to add up as long as they are done with some grace and finesse. This had about as much grace and finesse as trying to perform brain surgery with one hand and hammer.
While there are some thrills, they are quickly forgotten after the film switched views. The filmmakers try to make it better near the end with a twist and car chase. The car chase is very entertaining but the twist has no real reason for happening.
It seemed as though the filmmakers thought, "Well we have this really crappy script and gimmick about seeing the same thing over and over again from a different view that is very stupid, let's throw in a twist to make it seem like we had a bigger plan all along." This movie has one or two good thrills and a nice car chase, but no development in terms of story or characters and the whole thing just seems to be an exercise to see how many times you can do an idiotic gimmick until it just becomes pointless (the answer is twice, the other six times they did it took 15 points of the IQ of everybody in the theater).
I give this film one and a half out of five stars.
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