Vantage Point: Storytelling Rediscovered

I wonder how easy it is to kidnap or kill US President. We watch so many movies on same plot every year. Vantage Point is again a movie where the target is US President addressing an anti-terrorism summit in Spain, and falls prey to a terrorist plot. In this movie it takes only 5 well placed terrorists to kidnap/kill the president, unless they had one super agent in secret service.

The movie is about a 20 minute long incident, and we are shown these same 20 minutes 5 times from the eyes of different characters looking at the incident from different angle, different point of view. First we get to see US President getting shot at through the camera of a news channel, then our super agent in secret service, an American tourist shooting the event through his handy cam, a local cop, who somehow happens to know one of the terrorists. We even get to see the same event from the eyes of US President and finally we see the same event through the eyes of the terrorists and find out what actually happened.

Story of Vantage Point is very simple and straightforward, it covers a 20 minutes long event, but the beauty of the film is non-traditional narrative. We have shown the same event from different angles and that is what is the USP of the film. Some people actually didn't like the repetition of same scenes again and again, but I guess they did not notice the difference every time same scenes were played on the screen. Dennis Quaid and Forest Whitaker have done brilliant acting. Others also look convincing. By the way the movie is not about acting, it's about the narrative and the pace. It's story telling rediscovered in true sense.

My rating for Vantage Point is 7 out of 10. Worth a watch.