Vantage Point.
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Vantage Point is a wan title for such a bustling movie. (Since it's William Hurt in the terrorists' gun sights, it could be called Kill Bill.) But if it hints at the title of a famous 1970 car chase movie, Vanishing Point, that makes sense, since the new film argues that terrorists can be tracked down not by super-sleuthing or political back-channeling, but because of the fanatically assured driving skills of a lone government agent. The film also has echoes of a few other cluttered frescoes that play out in a limited time-frame: Vantage Point, reduced to essentials, is Crash starring Jack Bauer.
Director Travis's early claim to fame was the 2004 Omagh, a retelling of the massacre of 29 civilians in a Northern Island town a decade ago. That TV film's script was co-written by Paul Greengrass, and Travis has borrowed some of the jittery camerabatics that Greengrass applied as director to of United 93and the last two episodes of the Jason Bourne saga. You can easily spot Travis's attempt at docudrama bona fides from the gritty cinematography. All the 50-plus mid-level stars — Quaid, Hurt, Weaver, Bruce McGill — are shot (I mean photographed) so unflatteringly that they look weary, lined, older than John McCain on one of his recent bad days.
Early on, we learn that Secret Service Agent Thomas Barnes (Quaid) had taken a bullet for Ashton a year ago, so this is a least the second assassination attempt during the his regime. Ashton, though, is no ninny; stern and balding, he has the gruff gravitas of Fred Thompson or Rudy Giuliani, if either of them had got past their Presidential-primary gaffes and into the White House. And he is ready with heroic quotes for any occasion. When his adviser pleads, "Mr. President, we have to act strong," Ashton snaps back, "No, we have to be strong."
By this fourth or fifth rerun of the events, we have determined that Vantage Point has ambitions no higher than making the audience's collective pulse race as fast as the car Quaid will be maneuvering breathlessly through rush-hour traffic. The movie is best seen as straightforward, sometimes harrowing melodrama, packed with mistaken identities, beautiful villains, a kindly tourist who can outrace the bad guys, and a lost little girl whom the film brazenly sends onto a highway full of speeding cars. It's as if Dakota Fanning had wandered onto the streets of Ronin.
SPOILER ALERT / IDIOCY ADVISORY: You're a terrorist who's just pulled off an assassination plot that killed dozens of high-ranking U.S. officials and a few hundred innocent bystanders. Now you're tearing through town in your getaway van with precious cargo in the back and a Secret Service agent on your tail. Would you hit the car breaks and risk being caught just to avoid running into a little girl on the highway?
But plausibility is the concern of the 9/11 Commission, not of audiences looking for an exciting time at a February popcorn picture. Their vantage point isn't above the action, where they can dispassionately parse the plot and solve the mystery. It's behind the wheel of Dennis Quaid's churning vehicle, which sends innocent pedestrians sprawling as he pursues the bad guys. He's Mel Gibson as Madman Martin Briggs, and he's not in a sophisticated political parable like The Manchurian Candidate but the latest unofficial remake of Lethal Weapon.