movies: vantage point

Since we missed out on a movie last week due to the Sydney trip (it's already been a week since we left... *sob*) and the fact that Ma had this week off work, we decided to go and see a movie today.

We went down to Marion and had a choice between a couple of things, but ended up seeing Vantage Point (oh and the dumb ticket girl at Marion asked me if I wanted to sit in the centre, since they've started allocating tickets... and I just said sure... there was no way I was going to sit in the "allocated" seat anyway... they can do whatever they like, I'm gunna sit wherever the hell I like thank you very much!).

I didn't know a great deal about the movie, other than it repeats the same event from the viewpoint of eight different people... and really, once you know that, there really isn't anything more you need to know.

You watch the first version, and then the rest of the movie is spent going over and over and over the same events until at the end you work out what the hell has really been going on.

I just wish that the people responsible for cutting the trailers didn't always find a way to put a bunch of spoilers into the trailers... specifically the stuff involving William Hurt's presidential character.

It's something of an odd film... it's equal parts a movie where you put your brain in neutral and just enjoy the ride and a movie where you're trying to work out what the hell actually happened. And just when you think you're getting close to working something out, it fades to white, then to black and you get the time in the bottom corner counting down to noon again and you're off with another character.

The plot is possibly a little bit thin on the ground, since they only really have about 20 minutes worth of actual film, the remaining hour and a bit is taken up with redoing it over and over and over.

And there were certain characters I kind of suspected from the beginning... in fact even within the very first loop of the story I thought... "well, you're going to be up to no good!"... and I was proved right.

The action scenes and fast cutting and everything get ratcheted up as the movie goes along, so you start off at a reasonably sedate pace and pretty much inside one room, and by the end it's all fast editing and quick camera work and whatnot.

While Ma had a bit of a nitpick about what Dennis Quaid's character manages to walk away from, that didn't bother me so much as some of the very fast driving sequences... either they used a fair bit of CGI to put the cars on the road, or something, but they were all driving very fast, and often going through spaces that, as you're looking at the character's POV you're thinking... "well now you're screwed, the car isn't going to go through there"... then you switch to an exterior shot and suddenly the car has made it through the gap and seemed to have a ton of room to spare.

It was an interesting premise though (the repeating time thing), and while it's not the greatest movie ever made and you can quite easily pick it to pieces after it's over, it's still fairly entertaining.

yani's rating: 2 repeating storylines out of 5