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Films Review
'Vantage Point' offers narrow view
Film on terrorism fails to bring needed perspective
If you’re looking for an exciting, but not engaging, hour and a half of undeveloped characters chasing one another around with a terrorism theme casually thrown in, then “Vantage Point” (Original Films/Columbia) is your picture.
The story, told from the point of view of eight characters with unique stories, has the promise of an interesting movie.
The film opens on the day of a summit marking the United States’ involvement in bringing Arab nations into peaceful action against terrorism. Then, minutes into the film, the president is shot. His Secret Service agents Thomas Barnes, played by Dennis Quaid, and Kent Taylor, played by Matthew Fox, are at his side.
As the film continues, each flashback — from the Secret Service agents, to the television crew covering the event, to the president and the terrorists responsible for the attack — gets longer, less interesting and more repetitive.
Entirely reliant on highly improbable situations, “Vantage Point” is just entertaining enough to keep you from leaving the theater, but the film doesn’t make a very strong point about much of anything.
Terrorism is portrayed negatively, the United States plays the part of the good guys and the eventual victor is obvious. There is a brief notion of seeking peace and understanding before bombing a terrorist camp, but this seems more politically than morally motivated.
In a time when terrorism is such a palpable fear in society, the film is nothing short of irresponsible in its dealings with the subject. Not only does it serve to heighten a fear of terrorism in a culture already consumed by it, but it presents the terrorists in a one-sided manner.
Terrorism is, without a doubt, a great evil. However, unlike some of the more respected movies that engaged in the topic in the years following 2001, “Vantage Point” makes no effort to account for the terrorists’ motivations.
Many correctly argue that terrorism is by definition unjustifiable acts of violence, but films such as “Kite Runner” and “United 93” attempted at least brief explanations of how these human beings come to act in such inhuman ways.
In “Vantage Point,” on the other hand, there is no such explanation. Not only is this shallow in terms of plot and filmmaking, but it also engenders and encourages an even greater level of fear.
While morality is upheld, it is done in a cheap and predictable fashion and disappointingly does not challenge the minds of the audience.
“Grant that I may not so much seek... to be understood as to understand,” reads the well-known prayer of St. Francis of Assisi. The writers’ of “Vantage Point” would benefit from the wisdom of St. Francis.
Christ called us to “love our enemies,” something we can begin to do by praying with St. Francis. The medieval saint encourages us to lay down our fears and biases and seek to understand the other side of the issue.
Given its subject matter, “Vantage Point” could have given the “bad guy” a back-story. It doesn’t and so fails to capitalize on a “teachable moment.” It fails to teach something we desperately need to learn again and again: peace, love and understanding.
Rebecca Bostic is a regular contributor to The Catholic Sun. Comments are welcome. Send e-mail to letters@catholicsun.org.
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