Vantage Point

Vantage Point stars, among others, Dennis Quaid, Matthew Fox, and Forest Whitaker. Quaid and Fox are secret service agents assigned to protect the president (William Hurt) while he makes a speech in Spain. Quaid is the old agent whose lost is nerve and probably should have retired, who has only recently been reinstated after taking a bullet for the Chief a year earlier.

Whitaker is an American tourist, who happens to be in the crowd with a camcorder when the president is suddenly shot, he thinks he has captured the terrorist on film, and for no apparent reason gets it into his head that the best way to help the Secret Service is to chase after them on foot with his camcorder.

The movie introduces each character one at a time, following them right up until the attack and then shortly thereafter. Then it stops, literally rewinds and shows us the same thing from a new character’s perspective, following that character until he too reaches a predetermined cut off point.

With each replay, different pieces of the puzzle are revealed helping us piece together the circumstances leading up to the deadly tragedy. The final picture is a surprisingly captivating, edge-of-your-seat experience.