ACTION; 1hr 29min
STARRING: Dennis Quaid, William Hurt
POTUS down: from left, Richard T. Jones and Quaid
Where better to shoot the leader of the free world than at an anti-terrorism summit? While addressing the masses in Spain, the US president (Hurt) is gunned down and bombs are detonated with the usual appalling fallout in the disappointing Vantage Point.
Rewinding through the incident and its lead-in from eight perspectives, the screenplay is incisive and adrenalised for much of its run. Quaid as a traumatised Secret Service agent, Sigourney Weaver as a television producer, Forest Whitaker as a spectator camcording the fiasco and other movers-and-shakers are all geed up for non-stop action. And they get it, too: while the points of view are all different, the shock, chaos and mass damage are a consistent, unnerving through-line.
If it hadn’t flipped its lid for melodrama in the final third, this would have been a bang-up number. But a jingoistic finale sends it out with a whimper.
