Vantage Point: Move missed the point

A critic's job is made most simple when an audience audibly groans and sighs at the movie's plot points. At my screening of "Vantage Point" -- from the murmurs that I could make out, walkouts were moments away when the film finally got it's act together and started telling a story.

But it was close.

So close, in fact, that the audience spoke of nothing else when the credits rolled. The most telling remark was, "We'd been out of here a half-hour ago if it wasn't for that stupid rewinding @#$%.[CloseDouble] Maybe they should have named the film Rewind.

Though clearly not original, the idea was interesting: Show the assassination of the President of United States and show/tell the same assassination from different points of view, or a different "Vantage Point."

The more literary of readers will know the idea has been well tread, and that it maybe reached its peak with Akira Kurosawa's, "Rashomon." The main idea of telling a story in this way is that each telling reveals to the audience something about the human condition, about our desires, about our prejudices, about life.

"Vantage Point" revealed nothing more than if you're looking over here you won't see what's going on over there. So rewinding the film back to the beginning simply to show the event from another's vantage point is, to put in with my fellow audience members, quite irritating.

The people have spoken. Take a pass on "Vantage Point."