Vantage Point

Love the concept, hate the execution. That's essentially the attitude of most critics to Vantage Point. The film is a kind of Rashomon, presenting a presidential assassination through the eyes of several witnesses (including the president himself). However, as Jan Stewart writes in Newsday: "While the varying perspectives enable us to revise our sense of what actually went down, each chapter contains information that could never be available to the character at its focus. It's a big, adrenalin-pumping cheat." Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times indicates that he was originally drawn into the story but soon became disappointed. "Initially intriguing and energetic, this film ends up demonstrating that a good script needs to be more than a clever concept and fine direction must be more than moving things fast." Manohla Dargis in the New York Times dismisses the film as "a gimmick in search of a point." Joe Morgenstern in the Wall Street Journal suggests that, like last week's top film Jumper, the point is in the marketing. He writes: "This week an unsuspecting public is the target of yet another massive marketing campaign on behalf of damned near nothing, and there's no reason to think the effort won't bear fruit. It's rancid fruit, though, if you care about the state of the medium. Vantage Point is above contempt, but not all that far."

from the vantage of mystery afficianados, much better than a 3....for most others, too long a wait....whitaker and hurt figure significantly....weaver is barely included....and quaid does most of the running, but little else.