Even with rewinds, 'Vantage Point' lacks insight

The sophomorically written gimmick thriller "Vantage Point" has no idea how police work, no clue how TV broadcasters talk, no understanding of how terrorists think, and little comprehension of how smart political thrillers should be made.

How seriously can we take a movie where radical terrorists coldly assassinate the U.S. president and kill untold scores of people with bombs, but would rather crash their getaway van and be caught than hit a cute little girl who wanders into the street?

These guys call themselves terrorists?

"Vantage Point" begins at a major anti-terrorist summit in Spain attended by several world leaders. We watch in horror as U.S. President Ashton (William Hurt) is shot by an assassin moments after taking the podium at a huge public gathering. Seconds later, an explosion rips through the crowd, scattering debris and people.

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If you don't pay much attention to this at first, don't worry. You're going to see this scene played over and over and over as "Vantage Point" shows us the assassination from the differing points of view of its major characters, starting with a GNN news director (Sigourney Weaver) trying to contain a reporter (Zoe Saldana) from commenting on anti-American feelings in the world.

After the shooting, explosions and mayhem, "Vantage Point" literally rewinds its footage back to its starting point, and we see the same events told from the perspective of a veteran Secret Service agent named Thomas Barnes (Dennis Quaid), rejoining active duty after recovering from taking a bullet intended for the commander in chief.

After the assassination, Barnes sees a man rushing the stage and tackles him. We find out he's a Spanish cop named Javier (Edward Ramirez). One explosion later, zip!

"Vantage Point" rewinds again to show us the same sequence of events, this time through the eyes and lens of American tourist Howard Lewis (Forest Whitaker), who shoots a video equivalent of the Zapruder film.

Zip!

Now we see the same events as witnessed by Javier the Spanish cop.

Zip!

Then by Barnes' good friend and fellow Secret Service agent Kent Taylor (Matthew Fox)

Zip!

Then by President Ashton.

On it goes, with each new perspective laying down just enough new information to keep us from groaning every time we see the rewound footage.

Barry Levy's exposition-clogged screenplay clearly owes a debt to Akira Kurosawa's 1950 classic "Rashomon," in which several characters tell differing accounts of murder/rape. He owes an even bigger one to Sidney Lumet's "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead," which last used the hokey fast-speed rewinding footage device.

Although Levy's chronological narrative shifts sound intriguing at first, it doesn't take long before the rewind gimmick gets stale, even with a couple of hyperbolic chase sequences. Unlike earlier films employing time-shifts ("Memento" and "Pulp Fiction" come to mind), "Vantage Point" doesn't have interesting characters or a compelling story to back up its gimmicky premise.

Some of it's downright brain-gouging, especially after the explosion when the U.S. agents run down Spanish streets, firing at will at a fleeing Javier, completely ignoring hundreds of fleeing locals in the line of fire.

Or when Javier sees someone slip a suspicious backpack -- obviously a bomb -- under the presidential podium. He shouts to Barnes and Taylor, "We've got to get out of here!" and the agents simply restrain him. Why doesn't Javier ever say, "There's a bomb!"?

Maybe because episodic TV director Pete Travis didn't want the word "bomb" linked to his inauspicious, frivolous feature directorial debut.

1#189; stars

Starring: Dennis Quaid, Matthew Fox, William Hurt, Sigourney Weaver and Forest Whitaker.

Directed by: Pete Travis.

Other: A Columbia Pictures release. Rated PG-13 (violence, language). Running time: 90 minutes.