A movie of two halves.


It seemed that this film was almost like two different films about the same subject, with the same actors, because the style of the film in the first half and the second half seems different.

In the first half, it is the same incident played from different people's point of views ("vantage points"). It reminded me a bit of Memento, where it would flash backwards.

Then the second part of the film dropped the "vantage point" part completely and became another car chase film. Not complaining, as it is one of the best car chases I have seen in a movie (the car chase in F & F 5, with the bank safe, is still the best). But it seemed like they ran out of ideas for the "vantage point" part and dropped it.

I actually thought that it was about a political assasination, and the people who viewed it. It has been said that, when people witness something, everyone's recollection is slightly different, depending on what they were focused on at the time.

I think it would have been interesting if they were trying to piece together who is the culprit, by what each person saw. Dennis Quaid saw someone in the window, and missed the assassination, for example, and Forest Whittaker's vantage point is watching through a video camera, as opposed to some else who is looking at it, unhindered. I think the different "vatage points" could have been pieced together, like a murder mystery, to find who is responsible. It could have made for a very interesting film.

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I agree - once the film shed the conceit of 'vantage points', it really loses a lot of both its interest and its credibility. The actual plot is disappointing and seemingly largely unmotivated, you get the implausibility of a presidential double - which is really pushing the audiences willing suspension of disbelief, and both Quaid and Whittaker are so intricately involved in everything that follows that they seem more like superheros than men, and events play out more like they are fated than incidental. This seems to contradict the style of the early part of the film where the chaos of intersecting action forbids any one person playing a dominating, significant role.

Probably that's why the shift occurred, to satisfy Hollywood's need to place someone in a starring role. It might have been better if they had stuck with the early style throughout and allowed us to be the only ones to really see what happened.

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I agree this made it odd and confusing and seemed like we were now in a different movie. During the first part, I thought it would be a mystery for us to figure out who the assassin was by seeing the different vantage points. As you say, that idea was dropped early on, and we, the audience, found out who the assassins were, and from then on it was just one giant car chase. This disjointedness may explain why it is not a more popular movie.

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Agreed!!!!

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Agreed. I was looking forward to a "whodunnit", and I like the changing "Vantage Points", until it turned into a demolition derby for what seemed like the entire 2nd half of the movie.

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