What's The Point?
I don’t get it. Why take a reasonably good narrative, with a moderately plausible plot line and then superimpose it on the most implausible of backdrops? This is Vantage Point.
     Vantage Point is tagged as eight strangers, eight points of view; one truth. It delivers on the multiple viewpoint pledge but, like one of Hillary Clinton’s famous stump speeches, the truth never gets in the way of the story.
     Aside from being paranoid delusional adherents to conspiracy theories, Vantage Point expects of its audience the ability to believe that the world’s hardest assassination target is in fact easy to get to. If you can believe this, and much more that this flick has to offer, then you’re probably already working on the Clinton Campaign. If you’re not, here’s some of the holes in Vantage Point that are big enough for, California Governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger to drive his Hummer through…
     The backdrop is a US Presidential speech at the end of a global leaders’ summit held in the sleepy Spanish town of Salamanca. Apart from housing a university that is almost 800 years old, this town is just too insignificant to ever host a major global summit. Obviously, from a production standpoint, it had to be in Spain because the producers felt a European summit gave their story more "street cred" than having it in, say, Toronto (and it had to be Spain because it was always going to be cheaper to actually film the thing in Mexico).
      The US President, played by Bill Hurt, is shot and chaos ensues.  
      The first point of view is that of a fictional cable TV network covering the event live. Have spent most of my journalist career as a TV news producer this is an area in which I have some degree of expertise. First, global summits are boring and, apart from the photo ops, nothing exciting happens in public view, so no network would have live wall-to-wall coverage. Their reporter on the ground is a twenty-something girl who delivers a piece to camera so poorly scripted it couldn’t make it to air on a regional station in Wisconsin, let alone a global network. If it’s such a big political event, she wouldn’t be covering it, you’d have the senior bureau chief on location, an expert journalist at least in his, or her, forties or fifties.
     Sigourney Weaver plays the broadcast EP and makes a point of telling her reporter her job is not to editorialize — sorry, but that’s exactly the job of an expert. Among other little things, this is the only broadcast of the summit there are no other media at all! They have a roving cameraman, a major security risk never allowed at Presidential events — the cameraman is incidentally one of the assassination plotters. Add to that the whole outside broadcast team is a shambles and clearly nobody knows what they’re doing. 
     Up on the stage with the US President, there are at least two dozen world leaders all of whom casually mill about for a good fifteen minutes prior to the President’s arrival – yet in this entire time have no discernable security.
     While all this transpires: protesters line the Presidential motorcade – a security risk, so this would never happen. There is a large public crowd in front of podium – security risk, never happen. Spanish mayor gives speech in English and then introduces President – Diplomacy 101: only heads of government or state welcome presidents and prime ministers, so it would never happen. The US President arrives on stage with all dignitaries seated but he stands because there is no seat for him?
     The Spanish streets are crawling with police officers sporting the Stars and Stripes on their uniforms – no country allows foreign police to conduct any operations on foreign soil.
     Then viewers are asked to believe that the US President’s hotel is not properly locked down. They are enticed into entertaining the thought that a member of the Presidential protection detail of Secret Service is a terrorist infiltrator. And that another man can single handedly kill the President’s entire Secret Service detail of two dozen highly trained, armed and committed bodyguards? 
     Then we’re asked to believe that the US President has a “double” who gets wheeled out for public appearances whenever there is a heightened assassination risk?
      Add that to a car chase involving the film’s main character, a fiercely loyal Secret Service agent played by Dennis Quaid, that is perhaps one of the all time great cinematic comedy of continuity errors and you’ve pretty well got a handle on Vantage Point.
     Then, in a scene clearly inspired by Weekend at Bernie’s (the 1989 film that, the doyen of world cycling correspondents, Mike Tomalaris once described as, “the greatest cinematic masterpiece of the twentieth century”), the real President is wheeled out of his hotel on an ambulance stretcher in clear view of four dozen Presidential aides and bodyguards. And nobody recognizes their guy being shoved into the back of an ambulance? Please! 
     And to cap it all off this film features a suicide bomber who does not yell out “Allahu akbar” when he pulls the cord? 
     What’s more all this was written by a Jew! Barry Levy, a former third grade Hebrew teacher at the Temple Israel School in L.A., dreamt this one up. In the process he’s risked the good name of Jewish movie folks — that same name I’m desperately trying to peg my career on — to peddle conspiracy theories. Look here Barry, the Jews have hard enough a time convincing everyone we’re the victim of vast conspiracies without having to concoct conspiracies of our own.
     Then again, you do live in L.A., a town where there’s a universally accepted name for failed New Yorkers: Hollywood screenwriters.
      From my vantage point I really can’t see any point.