Vantage Point: Warning! SPOILERS!

CAUTION: THERE ARE SPOILERS AHEAD!
DO NOT KEEP READING IF YOU DO NOT WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS
IN VANTAGE POINT/EN EL PUNTO DE MIRA!!!!!!!!!!!






So Janna and Julio and Jose and I (I seem to have a thing for people with J-names….like Middkids Jess, Jesse, Joey, and Jake….) went to see Vantage Point last night. And oh my god, as Julio said “poor Salamanca, they’ve made you so pathetic!” (except in spanish). It was mostly entertaining and extremely frustrating. And also hilarious, especially when it was blatantly obvious to anyone who lives in Salamanca that 80% of the scenes were shot in Mexico. It’s one of those movies that I’d only ever see again if I a) was reallllllly missing Salamanca and felt like it was worth the hour and a half of mild torture to see some lovely aerial shots of the city, b) was really drunk with Janna and Julio and wanted to relive the old days, c) wanted to show someone who had never been to Salamanca what it looked like, or d) had amnesia and forgot how bad ithe movie was.

The movie’s tagline is something about 8 strangers all sharing their different viewpoints re: what happened when the president of the US was shot at an anti-terror summit in Salamanca (why Salamanca?!?! Nobody knows). I don’t think they ever actually get through the 8 viewpoints but maybe there was more than one viewpoint per clip. Anyway. It was obnoxious. The first 8 minutes or so of the movie is “real-time” and shows the president showing up, news coverage, him getting shot, and then the bomb going off in the Plaza Mayor, everybody freaking out, mayhem, etc. Then, the rest of the first half or ¾ of the movie is made up of 5 or 6 different “stories” “told” respectively with the following people as protagonists: Dennis Quaid, Forrest Whitaker, William Hurt (the president), Eduardo Noriega, his supposed girlfriend/her terrorist amigos, aaaaaand maybe that’s it. Each of these individual “stories” starts 23 minutes before the president is shot/bomb goes off, and at the end of each “story” the frame freezes and rewinds through everything that just happened until it’s back to a few minutes before this scene, when they all arrive at the Plaza (Matthew Fox and Dennis Quaid are security guards).


This is right before the president (actually, a body-double, which might cause some confusion later on in the movie, but we’ll get to that) gets shot.


This is right after the president has been shot, Dennis Quaid and black security guard saw Eduardo Noriega run up onto the platform and think he’s suspicious when really he’s not, he’s a police officer and anyway in the end we find out he’s been used by his terrorist/anti-american girlfriend. Whatever. There was a lot of yelling and tense faces in this movie.


Forest Whitaker is this poor dude who is just traveling around Europe to get away from his divorce and manages to film EVERYTHING with this camera. At the end of the movie after he’s run around Salamanca like a nutcase and run across streets and saved a little girls’ life by diving in front of an ambulance, he still has the freaking camera! Julio says he wants one because it looks like it is literally a life- saver. Just one of many inconsistencies in the movie…argh. Anyway, it seems like Forest recorded an assassin in a window in the Plaza and so the security guards are checking it out. Matthew Fox later turns out to be a double-crossing liar and is actually part of the plot behind killing the president—the supposed assassin was actually a fan remotely turned on. Matthew Fox decides to go investigate because clearly, he’s in on it, but he plays it off like he’s taking one for the team because Dennis Quaid has some shame in his past and can’t really afford to making a mistake again. Or something.



Anyway, after all of the short stories that rewind at the end and make you want to scream because you just don’t CARE anymore and you just want to know what happens AFTER all of these freaking clips end, there is like….half an hour or more of everyone’s stories intersecting as the pieces finally fall into place. And it’s cool in the sense that you get it, and you see how all of the points of view overlap, but then the movie ends and you say to yourself….wait a minute, what was the point of that?! We’ll get to that in a minute, more photos for now.

This is poor, used, Eduardo Noriega running from the local police/whomever. He also liked to run across multi-lane highways. The actors in general in this movie really liked to do that. It was obnoxious. Also, much of this took place on an elevated and intense highway system that not only does not exist in Salamanca, it is certainly not SEVEN BLOCKS from the Plaza Mayor as Dennis Quaid says at the end. It might not seem to funny to those of you who haven’t ever been here but it would be like…I don’t know, digitally placing an LA 4-lane highway in Brunswick, Maine or Carlisle, MA. Totally ludicrous! But anyway.



This is poor but sweet Forest Whitaker carrying STUPID ANA (she tries to cross this anomalous highway and nearly gets killed by an ambulance containing the real President, driven by Eduardo Noriega’s double-crossing terrorist girlfriend, but Forest Whitaker saves her). Notice how he still has his freaking camera!

This is right near the end of the movie where Dennis Quaid has just fast-speed-chased Matthew Fox and another terrorist guy in a police car for literally like a half an hour through the CLEARLY MEXICAN streets of “Salamanca.” After he gets squished between an 18-wheeler and a wall in his car and escapes RELATIVELY UNSCATHED, Dennis Quaid runs down to this supposed overpass and manages to find the ambulance that held the kidnapped president, which has not only rolled over on its side about 7 times but has gotten sideswiped by like 8 cars that pile up around it…..only to find the president, alive, and able to STAND UP RIGHT AWAY after all of that.

So Dennis Quaid finds the president and he’s all “call for help! Oh em gee! We’re 7 blocks from the Plaza Mayor” which, hello, you just drove around the winding streets of Salamanca for EVER and you think you know EXACTLY where you are?! Not even!

After everyone is all happy because the president is still alive, bad guys are dead, blah blah, there is like an aerial pull-back shot of Salamanca that not only includes this amazing, anomalous overpass/highway but an elevated TRAM, with an old beat-up tram chugging right across the screen. With the cathedral in the background. In addition to these gems, there is a tall metropolitan/modern hotel tower where the president/security guards are staying, with amazing views of the Plaza/Cathedrals. There is no building tall enough ANYWHERE AROUND SALAMANCA to get such a view. It was done with a helicopter! Absurd. THEN, there is a statue of a dude on a horse outside the plaza. Right, yes, him...I see that statue every day. There was even a Moroccan section of Salmanca, apparently, too. I know, I'm being super critical and whatever, nobody who doesn't know Salamanca would ever KNOW, it's just....too funny! And sad, because Salamanca really rocks.

Speaking of which, why in god's name was there an anti-terrorist summit in Salamanca!? There is no explanation, I'm sorry. Also, WHO WERE THE TERRORISTS?? What was their deal??! What did they want?! That was never explained, either, as far as I can tell. All we really deduced was that the message was "Hey! We're the US! Look at us! We NEVER DIE!!!! YOU CAN NEVER KILL OUR PRESIDENT! Plus, we chose NOT to bomb Morocco (or whatever) because we are MORAL and PACIFIST! Did I mention that you can't kill us, and that terrorists are horrible and are out to get the president but it's NOT HIS FAULT!?!? Plus, THE PRESIDENT IS INVINCIIIIBLEEEE. That is all."

Anyway, we were entertained, if not by the actual movie, then at least by the inconsistencies, anomalies, and sheer absurdity. Plus, cute guys.



Oh! Weird fact! This dude aka terrorist leader man who, among other things, instructs his bellboy friend to strap dynamite to himself and blow up the aforementioned insanely tall and modern hotel, remotely sets off the fan that confuses Dennis Quaid into thinking there is an assassin somewhere in the Plaza, creepily befriends Forest Whitaker, remotely shoots the gun that actually IS in the Plaza buildings that kills the president, and later drives around with Eduardo Noriega's supposed girlfriend is played by a guy who got into the movie business because he's good friends with Matthieu Kassovitz aka Nino from Amélie....small world!



Family gets here in a WEEK!!!!!!
xoxo
-c-