Vantage Point

NEW YORK (CNS) - As a wise man once said, it all depends on how you look at it. The aptly named "Vantage Point" (Columbia), a propulsive thriller about an attempted assassination of a U.S. president (William Hurt), gives us the same events in the same time frame from eight disparate perspectives.

President Ashton is in Salamanca, Spain, and he's just about to deliver a speech at the conclusion of a peace summit between Western and Arab leaders when shots ring out and he's propelled backwards. Minutes later, bombs go off, causing devastation and panic in the picturesque Plaza Mayor square. (Most of the filming was actually done in Mexico.)

Among the participants and onlookers are Secret Service agents Thomas Barnes (Dennis Quaid) and Kent Taylor (Matthew Fox), the former only just recovered from taking a bullet for the president during an assassination attempt a year before; Howard Lewis (Forest Whitaker), an American tourist with a camcorder; American TV producer Rex Brooks (Sigourney Weaver), watching the events from a control room; and Enrique (Eduardo Noriega), a Spanish security officer tackled by Barnes in the melee.

Other characters whose roles become clearer as the same events play out over and over again are paramedic Veronica (Ayelet Zurer), affable local Suarez (Said Taghmaoui), who strikes up a conversation with Howard in the crowd, Anna (Alicia Jaziz Zapien), a cute little girl with an ice-cream cone who gets separated from her mother, and myriad others on the scene during the frightening events. To say more would ruin the revelations that come with each successive version of events.

Director Pete Travis demonstrates a great affinity for this kind of material, while the cast -- amid all the high-speed mayhem -- manages to deliver committed performances, all the more impressive given the high action quota. Quaid is outstanding, conveying his character's emotional turmoil, as he rises to the occasion of nailing the perpetrators. And Whitaker's Everyman tourist is effortlessly empathetic.

Though the plot is implausible in numberless ways, Barry L. Levy's script is quite clever, and repetition of the principal events, "Rashomon"-style, adds fascinating detail and never grows tiresome, while culminating in a heart-pounding car chase, one of the best ever captured on the big screen.

The script's stance on the world situation -- underlying all the heavy-duty action -- is a humane one, and the views espoused by President Ashton in his principal segment of the film have an admirably moral grounding.

The film contains much action violence which, though intense, is not gruesome, frequent uses of the s-word uttered under duress, and some mild profanity. The USCCB Office for Film & Broadcasting classification is A-III -- adults (though acceptable for older teens). The Motion Picture Association of America rating is PG-13 -- parents strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.

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Copyright (c) 2007 Catholic News Service/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops