| Film Review |
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| Written by Gerry Hill | |
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Venue: Cine 5, Ster Kinekor, Maerua Mall
Film: VANTAGE POINT Director: Peter Travis Screenplay: Barry Levy Players: Dennis Quaid; William Hurt; Matthew Fox; Forest Whittaker; Sigourney Weaver. Genre: Action; political thriller Rating: **** ‘vantage point’ is defined by the O.E. Dictionary as ‘an advantageous position for defence or attack’. This film cleverly harnesses the idea so as to represent an American Presidential assassination from 8 different points of view: replaying the same 23 minutes prior to the first gunshot. Not all of the characters, however, are in ‘an advantageous position for defence or attack’. Howard (Whitaker) is a bumbling American tourist, trawling Europe while his wife decides if she wants him or not. He does not fit the definition.
Fragmented pictures forming a collage introduce the credits, already
introducing the idea of a fractured scene, or variegated points of
view. The setting is Salamanca, Spain, where world leaders from over
150 countries meet to take a stand against terrorism. Forgive the
naivety, but it seems fairly obvious that such a politically public
stance simply invites the odd fanatic to test the waters and to
disprove the theory that world peace is possible! We never learn much
about the fanatics, by the way: we know only that they like ‘dead
people’ and have a yen to hi-jack the American President.
Further to the notion of a scene from many different perspectives, the film begins in the mobile production van of GNN - Global News Network – (wonder which TV station this is emulating?) where Production Manager (Weaver) is barking instructions to 5 or 6 different cameramen and the bank of TV monitors offers a multi-layered perspective of this peace summit. She exhorts the anchorwoman, Angie, that, “We’re here for the summit, not the side show”. As events transpire, the sideshow proves the crux of the action; the summit is a non-starter. At 11h58 the critical 23 minutes begins for each of the interested parties – those involved in defence, such as our hero, Agent Thomas Barnes (Quaid), a Presidential security man trying to recover his nerve after a former attack, during which he fielded a bullet intended for the President. His partner, Agent Taylor, (Fox) proves duplicitous. During the critical 23 minutes we replay 8 times two gunshots, which bring down the President in a crowded plaza, which is followed minutes later by a bomb nearby. From each of the replays of various ‘vantage points’ the audience is able to piece together fragmented bits of information in order to remain one step ahead of the hero in solving the mysteries of ‘how? why? and who?’ – half of the ‘journalist’s bag of questions’. The other half of the bag – ‘what? where? and when’ - is provided to the audience immediately – as an incentive to play Sherlock Holmes. Quaid plays a gritty bodyguard in the short sequence prior to the assassination attempt and the preliminary scene does give some indication of the constant stress incumbent upon a bodyguard when his charge is vulnerable in a public area. It all seems hopelessly unpredictable and uncontrollable – despite techno gadgets in terms of sophisticated communication systems, available tourist video cameras, and weaponry. |
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