Vantage Point

Vantage Point has been floating around movie theaters for a while, there have been trailers for it running since last summer. That would seem to indicate confusion as to how to market what is essentially a tense assassination thriller that consistently holds your interest. With a cast that includes actors like Bill Hurt and Dennis Quaid, plus some attractive bad guys the film keeps hopping from, ah, vantage point to vantage point to tell the same story from multiple angles.
If you're familiar with the cinema of Michael Haneke you can see his style in Vantage Point, what with the action rewinding every reel to mark a transition to another character's point of view. Make no mistake, VP is not a Haneke film yet there's something to be said for the way his touch has been dumbed down but still used in American films.
Back to VP: The first segment shows a gathering in a town square in Spain where the U.S. President (Hurt) prepares to make a major policy speech as seen from the control room of GNN cable news. When POTUS is shot the action rewinds and the film starts over from the perspective of a tourist video taping the event (Forest Whitaker); the terrorist who planned the assassination, secret service agent Quaid, and then POTUS himself watching blocks away from a hotel suite as his body double takes the bullet. Finally the film goes past what has been revealed and concludes the tale after a massive car chase through the city's crowded plaza.
Director Pete Travis comes from a TV movie background. Even though Vantage Point offers plenty of potboiler atmosphere it also uses the latest film editing techniques (think Bourne Ultimatum) and presents the action with a complete yet fractured continuity. Concept films like these - the audience either buys the premise or no. I bought it mainly on the strength of the talent (look for a scene with Brue McGill and James LeGros as feds) and heightened action sequences.