Finally got around to seeing “Vantage Point” tonight. It just occurred to me it was a rather short movie. IMDB tells me it was only ninety minutes long, which is a good length. There was never a part where I thought “well, they could have done without this“, and I don’t think there was really anything left to add. Nice, concise, to-the-point, quick and dirty action. Car chases, gun shots, ice cream… what more do you need?
I don’t remember when this movie came out exactly. Last year? Quite some time ago. I saw bits and pieces of the trailer and thought it looked vaguely interesting, so I tried not to watch anymore of it or hear anything about it. I didn’t want to expect anything going in, because there was no way I would like it if I knew what to expect. Do I really have to go over my high expectations complex again? I think it’s been covered more than enough times already.
The only thing I really figured out from the previews was that the same story was going to be told from six or so different points of view, like “11:14″. And that was a decent movie, so sounds good!
I love reading the “audience comments” threads on IMDB, but just couldn’t make it through this one. The majority of the comments were about people groaning and yelling “Jesus Christ!” every time they switched to a different viewpoint. I mean, honestly. I knew nothing about this movie in advance, and yet I still knew that we were going to see the same thing several times over. How is it that these people can walk into this movie expecting something else? Did they just blindly pick a theatre? Honestly!
It was fun to play along, trying to piece together the puzzle, figure out who was behind it by watching Dennis Quaid’s expressions. Sure, that got a little old, as did the fact that certain characters (and their nice, crisp suits!) escaped unscathed from gunshots and car crashes while others died a little too easily. But that is how all action movies are, and to expect anything else is ridiculous. When you do find a movie where the bad guy wins, be grateful. The fact that there are so few of such movies is because no one is grateful when that happens. There’s no pleasing you people, is there!?
So, yes. Some parts were cheesy. Action movies are cheesy. Romances are cheesy. Bad sci-fi movies are cheesy. A little cheese is good, but if you eat too much of it, it starts to leave a bad taste in your mouth and then you have to go drink a chocolate milk but that means you have to make it so you just grab a fruit punch instead.
I don’t recall who I believed to be “in on it” (though I had a fifty-fifty chance with just about everyone), but I can tell you one thing, ’twas not the little girl. I probably said it was Jackie first, but basically forgot about him since he was mostly absent after the first two viewpoints, so I relegated him to a lowly co-star, since usually the people I know in movies only appear for a scene as a cross-dressing dress-maker or a overdosing nun and then are gone. (Here be a spoiler!) In retrospect, I probably should have noticed that he was gone and registered such activity as suspicious.
My habit of watching bad films and MST3K has led me to often commenting aloud during movies. I had much more variation in my comments than did most of your average movie-goers, however. I unfortunately didn’t find an appropriate scene where Jack was in disbelief of something, so I just randomly yelled out “WHY DO YOU FIND IT SO HARD TO BELIEVE?!?” (even though, yes yes, he was the one that said it and it doesn’t really make sense).
However, I always like to point out numbers. The second viewpoint started with “23 minutes ago” at which I cried “oh my god! 23 is a number!”. My brother informed me that 5 is also a number… and that 2 and 3 are… 5!!! I was surprised that he didn’t have the whole thing figured out by the first go around, since he’s apparently quite an intuitive feller.
(Yarrr, another spoiler from here to the double line break!) At one point, Cuffy (Forest Whitaker, since I don’t suppose anyone would know where that nickname comes from) was watching the window with the man in it and said something along the lines of “what is he doing there? he’s not supposed to be up there!”, which I took as meaning “…he’s supposed to be over there” meaning Cuffy was orchestrating the whole thing and he knew the gunman was in the wrong place. A-ha, ‘twould have been a clever twist, wouldn’t it? Of course, I had to pick the one guy who wasn’t in on it. I also decided early on that his wife died. But then he says his kids were with his wife. “They died too. In a car crash” I quickly corrected. But then he had to go and talk to them on the phone. I admit it, I fail.
He had quite a nice camera, but at one point, the way the picture on the screen was moving was just too steady. Especially for being zoomed in. But even if it wasn’t, picture screens don’t move like that. When you move the camera, the picture moves too. And the super-high tech phone? I totally support technology and acknowledge that is capable of a lot of things. I don’t like saying anything is impossible, but at this point in time, I just don’t think anything like that could possibly exist.
One part bothered me: the end of the little girl’s story. Disappointing! She was stupid enough to be standing there, no tears would’ve been shed by me if she had been killed. She was old enough to know better, so cry baby cry.
I quite liked the president’s viewpoint; how they twisted it and then untwisted it. You think something happened, but then it didn’t, but then it actually did, but in a different way than you thought. Pretty cool.
Going back a little here, it just occurred to me how funny it is that when I’m watching sci-fi or action movies I go “oh, come on, it’s just a movie. It can be unrealistic. Gravity doesn’t apply to actors!” but when I watch romantic movies I go “so fake. How can you watch this? Absolutely dreadful! That would never happen in real life!”. You would think it would be the other way around. Must be my woman showing.
So, overall, the ending, ie. who did it (which I’m still kind of confused about, it’s one of those movies you watch again and catch a bit more), was satisfying. It was tied up nicely, it was entertaining, all in all, it was good.
And the last little tag bit at the end was nice, cute. A good ending, which most movies don’t have. It was an obvious attempt to “make you think”, which was at least better than most movie’s shitty cop-out endings. I also thought of a joke (too late, as they always seem to be) for the ending: “so, I guess they have to give him back?” (since he was a loan after all! Ba-dum-csssh!).