I just finished watching Vantage Point, and I’m not really sure what to think about it. It’s a very original idea: show the same event from many different, ahem, vantage points, and, according to one of the screenwriters in a special featurette is, “sort of an onion. You peel away layer after layer until you’ve seen and discovered the whole movie.”
The problem is that the movie decided to stop peeling the onion a few layers from the end, and replaced it with a tiny car chase (the cars are tiny, not the chase), and thought that “tying up loose ends” = “killing people off before we really know anything about them.”
Overall, it was pretty fun to watch, but there are so many unanswered questions that the more I think about it, the less I’m impressed with it.
Sounds like Rashomon with more guns and less rape.
Actually, there is more rape and less guns.
Kurosawa is overrated.
Oh. So you’ve seen it?
Mark,
I watched “Vantage Point” this weekend after I saw the trailers making it look like “Absolute Power,” one of my favorite movies of all time. I’ve found that a movie’s awesomeness is directly proportional to my ability to watch it all the way through without falling asleep. This weekend I attempted to watch “Vantage Point” four times and I fell asleep four times. I wanted it to be great but it wasn’t. I was very disappointed.
I’d suggest that you watch “Before the Devil Knows you’re Dead.” The film uses exactly the same re-telling devices as “Vantage Point”, but with more guns, larger cars, better psychological dilemmas, and the acting genius we refer to as Mr. Philip Seymour Hoffman.
DAVE
That sounds like the few times I tried to watch “The Passion of the Christ” - I kept falling asleep, only to wake up to the sounds of a man being beaten to death. Not a wholly pleasant experience. I never did find out how it ends…
Funny that you say that, Dave, because I fell asleep during my first attempt to watch it, and it took me about 4 days just to watch the last 30 minutes of it. I’ll definitely check out that other movie.
Russ, here’s how Passion ended: He died, but a bunch of people think he’s still alive. You know, like Elvis.
Speaking of falling asleep during movies, I went to see the Hulk movie a few years back (the Ang Lee one) in the cinema with my girlfriend (at that time) and 3 of her nephews (all in the 8-12 year old age bracket that you would think the movie would appeal to most)
my girlfriend and I, and 2 of her nephews all fell asleep. I don’t even want to know how that film ends.
I woke up to Nick Nolte turning into some kind of electric-monster-hulk-beast-thing and decided to go back to sleep.
The last movies I fell asleep in the theater:
10,000 BC
The Chronicles (what?) of Narnia: Prince Caspian
Hulk (the Ed Norton one)