saw: vantage point
The audience I saw this purported political thriller with was in nonstop stitches once the extent of the movie's inept narrative gimmick became fully apparent. (Without giving too much away, let's just say it borrows liberally from the conceits of both Groundhog Day and Dave. It's worth pointing out that those films were intentionally and successfully comedic; Vantage Point falls into a different, campier category.) In the hands of a more skilled technician—say Ridley Scott, Paul Greengrass, Phillip Noyce; Brian De Palma on a good day—this series of preposterous shenanigans and ill-used A-list acting talent just might have been credibly executed despite its facile and ultimately nonsensical interpretation of geopolitics; but in television director Pete Travis' hands it's literally the celluloidal equivalent of the multi-car pileup that serves as a hastily knotted conclusion to the story's rat's nest of loose ends. Grade: D+