As much as I would like to be a stereotypical fat white geek living in a basement somewhere, I do find the need sometimes to venture outside of my first-story room to get some Vitamin D in my blood, if only because I prefer my complexion to be at least slightly darker than that of a geisha. What results probably resembles some semblance of a life; as you may glean from the title I do enjoy seeing some works in live-action and in my native language just as much as my pastel-colored, rainbow-haired, moe-charged foriegn anime.

Coinicidentally said happenings have been the result for a lack of any coherent posting schedule of recent, and finding myself falling behind again, I’m going to make like a good game developer and push the actual content back a few days while finding some way to stop-gap it.

And what better way than to make a pretentious review of some movie in a genre that I don’t really know much about, in a scene that I don’t really know much about? Admittedly despite my enjoyment for Bond flicks and random explosions I’m not quite sure what the benchmarks are here for good action movies, but I’ll do my to bring you a fair opinion of an American movie from a Japanese anime fan.

Non-spoiler and spoiler reviews available after the jump.

just shop two cars and an explosion behind this and you’ll get an idea

Vantage Point is, as you might imagine from a trailer which contains two explosions, a car chase, and a lot of gunshots, a pretty unabashed action movie designed to appeal to the adrenaline junkie in everyone.

(Incidentally, you’ll note I don’t link the trailer because it contains one of the major plot twists of the movie … how strange.)

It’s gotten a pretty mixed bag of reviews from both critics and fans and I think this boils down to one thing, and that’s one’s ability to turn their mind off and still enjoy a movie.

Not to say that Vantage Point is an overly dumb movie but the plot twists and turns are generally either pretty well-choreographed or way out in left field - depending on how bright you are - and so it’s not exactly a mental thriller designed to leave you analyzing the situation. It doesn’t really drop clues and leave them for later so much as obscure them totally, building up to a climax where something Might Be Revealed … and suddenly cutting out.

This is due to the gimmick of the movie, the self-referencing vantage points, where the same 23-odd minutes are told over and over through 5 or 6 people before overlapping together and adding up to the true, thrilling climax of the show. It’s kind of functionally structured like some visual novels, where each character and their path reveals a different part of the story, and at the end, in the final path, all the cards get played out.

The problem is, and this is one of the complaints about the movie I think is most valid, is that it’s structurally very repetitive. Just like the beginning of a visual novel before you’ve started a girl’s path, you end up going through the same generic intro stuff over and over, except here, there’s no fast-forward key to burn through dialogue. It’s the exact same footage a lot of times too - you see the president get shot, and the same explosion, probably four times or so.

Whether this is a necessary evil or not depends on the individual viewer, as Vantage Point can keep you baited by adding a little bit more to the story through every vantage point, revealing another twist, another plot point, before cutting out and starting over. Some people will find this obscuring of information unfair, but I think the way the holes are filled in - at least initially - isn’t too bad. Although, I did find myself groaning when they kept cutting things out at the most exciting part…but at least they returned to it.

The other defining thing about Vantage Point is that it is completely and utterly an action movie all the way to its core, and so if you’re expecting anything that’s really intellectually challenging you’re probably in the wrong place. Explaining character backstory is ignored in favor of just glossing over it and getting to all the shooting, exploding, and chasing. Naturally, all three are patently ridiculous, with, for example, a car chase that goes over 15 minutes and involves the “lead” guy’s car getting into a heavy accident - twice - and continuing on. Or the fact that pretty much everyone gets bored of being either a) a good guy or b) a bad guy and starts double-crossing people on both sides. It’s not a movie for the motives, but for the moment.

But you know what? That’s OK. I don’t expect moe in my Kaiji and I don’t expect Intense Gambling Action(tm) in my KimiKiss. Vantage Point does what it does - action - reasonably well from what I can tell, and while the rewinding style does lead for some forced breaks in the action, eventually it does add up in an enjoyable fashion, and while you’ll be nitpicking the plot holes to pieces as you walk out of the theater you will still feel a lot more energized and pumped than when you walked in.

On an anime equivalent, I’d rate it as about equivalent to Myself;Yourself - a work that makes no pretenses about what it is, that still brings a few unexpected new things to the table amidst all the points typical to their genres, that, while cliched, are still fun for one heck of a ride. You can probably drive a truck through some issues in both of them, but you’ll probably be too busy being on the edge of your seat. Basically, not a You Must See This for everyone in the world, but for those who like this kind of genre, a solid recommendation.

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SPOILER SECTION:

To be fair, now that I’m here I don’t have a lot to say that wouldn’t involve just taking the movie to pieces and going “What the hell was that?!”, but I’m going to cover all the main stories and see what I can get from there.

On a side note, I really liked the choreography of the intro of the movie - where the title was shown and all before we actually got to the overhead shot of Spain - although I can’t tell why. Somehow I feel that it would have had more of an impact after the first pass-through, after the exploding and the president-shooting and what not, but that’s just a random thought.

The first section was a good hook, though, since it was the first time seeing all the action in the plaza; I’ll admit that despite muttering “they’re going to shoot the president they’re going to shoot the president” over and over in my head I still jumped when it actually happened, and then, y’know, things exploded and it was very shocking. I thought it was nice of them at least to tone down the ’shock’ factor for subsequent shootings, allowing the viewer to take a closer look at other details.

I wonder, if I had looked at the background of the movie more, would I have been able to piece anything out of it, other than the clues fed to the viewer? That’s one thing I enjoy about anime is that sometimes it’s up to you to make things out of ordinary situations.

Moving on I suppose I should have expected some more of the herrings and twists, such as how the Spanish police officer trying to jump the stage was actually A Good Guy, while the man that worked with Barnes was the Rogue Agent, considering how much attention they brought to both of them (not to mention, trying to frame the tourist as a criminal from the start), but overall they weren’t too tacky.

Finding out on the fifth or so passthrough that the president had a body double, though, something that was said in the trailer, just made me feel stupid though. It was followed by a better twist though by showing that the terrorists weren’t Stupid but rather Arrogantly Stupid, breaking into the President’s suite and generally following the Americans step by step until they got on top, where things went to hell.

Amusingly so, really. Watching it all fall apart at the end, around the ten-minute mark of the car chase, was the unintentionally funny part of the movie. The climax had been going strongly for a while, until after the second time Barnes wrecks his blue hatchback (for the love of God, steal a better car if you’re going to steal one) and kees going, I realize that it’s never really going to end, and that the terrorists’ loss was, in the end, all their faults!

Bad Guy #1 (rogue agent?) drives into a post while trying to escape and the other one rolls the getaway ambulance while trying to avoid a little kid. The loli wins again! Seriously, it was as good as Barnes climbing out of the hatchback without a scratch after getting crunched by a full-on truck and trailer into a wall. That’s five-star safety for you.

The earlier climaxes of the action were more believable, at least, and it all was good fun, but this just left a strange taste of Deux Ex at the end.

Another good observation I had in this movie that made me sad, was how impersonal terrorism has become in the 21st century. The sniper rifle shooting the ‘president’ was controlled by an iPhone, the bomb blowing up the place was controlled by an iPhone, and generally, when they needed something to happen, they stood really far away and played with their…iPhone. All the actual gunfights and stuff took about two seconds each, where one guy stepped in, shot things dead, and then kept going.

Incidentally, the movie ends with a successful cover-up that the president is ‘recovering’ and that the ‘lone gunman’ was killed. But to be honest it felt a lot messier, considering that one of the president’s advisors, not to mention a lot of his agents, got knocked off in the film. How are you going to explain your Dept. of Defense guy (or whoever’s urging him to nuke Morocco) not showing up to work in the morning? …Or at home at night?

And one gripe I think is legitimate is the shaky-cam abuse in the film. Pretty much in 50% of the scenes it’s hard to tell what’s going on, because the directors tried to have a lot of motion and swinging about of their cameras to creating a feeling of ‘chaos’. I know we’re supposed to feel confused and lost and not know what’s going on because they just shot the president, but man, I like to know what I’m seeing, and y’know, not have to reach for a barf bag.

(Incidentally, on that note, Barnes also reads the license plate of the car he’s pursuing in the car chase and radios it in on the phone while dodging traffic at however-many miles an hour. That’s secret agent skills right there.)

But really, it’s all nitpicking. I think actually a little of that might be good - if you watch it with friends, you can enjoy the action and enjoy Mystery Science Theater-ing the movie to death - it’s strong, so to put it, at both ends. It’s not going to be a memorable movie by any means, but it’s not a waste of time either.

-CCY

wait, wrong movie

This post is tagged American Film