Vantage Point directed by Pete Travis stars Dennis Quaid, Matthew Fox (of Lost and Party of Five series) and Forest Whitaker. Recently I saw “The Last King of Scotland” and Forest gave a an incredible performance in that one. But, back to Vantage Point. Based in Salamanca, Spain it follows the attempted assassination of the US President told from different peoples perspectives. Each perspective adds a bit more to the riddle of the story as the assassination plot unfolds.
At about the 3rd “rewind” and replay of another perspective the idea was starting to grow thin but thankfully it then starts to play out through to the end. The plot was interesting and it sometimes reminded of Babel. One scene in particular is the perception from a distance of a altercation between a man and a woman. From the first vantage point it appears to be one sense of emotion but from a different vantage point the scene tells a different story. The point being that what you see is not always the reality. Overall I would rate this a 2.5 out of 5. I would probably watch it again just to pick up on any extra subtleties that I missed and to see the performance of Forest Whitaker again.
10,000 BC
Roland Emmerich has also produced Independence Day and one of my top films The Day after Tomorrow so I was expecting quite a bit from this one. To be honest the CGI just wasn’t that convincing in the Egyptian building site scenes however the boats floating down the Nile were magnificent. You win some and you lose some. There was also possibly some issues with the movie quality either at the cinema end but it looked more likely to have been bad camera quality or something to that effect as it had blue and red interference during a particularly darkly lit scene in the movie. The acting was rather bad, the locations were stunning and the plot interesting. I wouldn’t be inclined to see it again and would probably rate this one 1.5 out of 5.