Vantage Point March 2, 2008

BF, bestfriend C, our close college friend (also an officemate) G and I watched Vantage Point at Eastwood last night. We caught the 10:30pm screening - and we got there 10:35pm. On a side note, I’m a stickler for things like this; if something is starting at a particular time I want to be there either at least 5-10minutes early or just in time for the movie, program or whatever to start.

Anyway, I’ve heard of the movie in the Oscars and I know a little of the plot when it was being awarded but I totally forgot what the movie was all about so I was kinda pissed that we missed the start - which is where most pivotal scenes in the middle of the movie come from. And then as we were watching the movie I realized on the first flashback how the movie was made. The ‘tagline’ of the movie is 8 Strangers 8 Points of View 1 Truth; literally there are 8 strangers and the story is ‘told’ by showing how these people see the ‘main event’ (don’t really want too much spoilers ). On the 3rd stranger people were laughing as the movie was being shown like it was ‘rewinding’. I was on the edge of my seat! The movie is sooo good and when we met our other friends for drinks after I was telling them to watch the movie! It was so action packed! And every time a (significant) stranger realizes or discovers something important his/her part stops and it goes back to a particular point in the movie and starts again so I was thinking “What did he see?!”, haha, it was a bit suspenseful.

After all the points of view of these different (significant) stranger, wherever their particular scene left off , it came together in one huge scene! And then you start to discover what they saw earlier and everything falls into place. Oh this movie is goood. Two thumbs up! Very, very good. Here’s a synopsis of the film I got from IMDB:

President Ashton (William Hurt) is attending a global war on terror summit in Spain. Thomas Barnes (Dennis Quaid) and Kent Taylor (Matthew Fox) are two of the Secret Service agents assigned to protect him. This is the first action that Agent Barnes has been in since he took a bullet for President Ashton six months earlier. We really dont know if Agent Barnes is up to the challenge of protecting the President. Shortly after President Ashton is escorted to the stage in the plaza by the Secret Service, he is immediately shot twice by a rifle from a window and falls to the floor. The crowd is in shock and chaos breaks out all over, especially, when bombs begin to explode. Howard Lewis (Forest Whitaker) is an American video-taping the event to show to his children that he was actually there at this historic event. He believes that he has the picture of the man who shot the President. Agent Barnes sees the tape and has a clue to that person. Several different people witness the event, and only through their eyes do we see the truth behind the assassination attempt.