Vantage Point

IT is a sad fact that often when something is tried differently in the creative industries it is either disregarded or doomed to failure.
Vantage Point seems to be a case in point. While it is far from a bad film it will hardly change the way we watch movies and seems to have split audiences across the country.
What is different about Vantage Point is that the narrative is told from eight different points of view as you gradually piece together the jigsaw puzzle of what has happened.
The film opens with an anti-terrorism summit in Spain and within moments the President of the United States is assasinated.
From the unique points of view of the TV crew and Secret Service to bystanders and those responsible, each segment of the film has a different take on what happened before time is literally rewound.
It pays tribute to 1950 Akira Kurosawa film Rashomon that pioneered this method of filmmaking but is a fairly new concept for western cinema.
And some viewers obviously didn’t have the patience for the technique as some people sighed and laughed as the clock continued to be rewound.
It is also quite telling that the best part of the film came in the form of a pulse racing car chase after time was reset for the last time — which was quite a relief after more than an hour of coincidences and unlikely twists.
As for the cast, Sigourney Weaver is excellent as a news producer, though Lost’s Matthew Fox seems to be a little out of his depth and the ever-talented Forest Whitaker could have done with a meatier role.
Although it doesn’t quite work, kudos goes to the filmmakers for trying something different.