Vantage Point

How would you go about assassinating POTUS? Security around the great man (or whatever jack-off currently occupies the office) was already extremely high before 9/11, and now it’s reached surreal levels. I’ve given it some thought (hypothetically, of course, in story terms), and have concluded that it would either have to be something insanely complex, or something very, very simple. Under simple, we would include things like a really good stand-off weapon, a ground-to-ground missile fired from a few miles away and remotely piloted (I know, this is simple? What I mean is, one or two people could do it) that would just vaporize all the elaborate precautions. I’m pretty sure the days of the lone gunman in a window are long gone.
The other option is what we see in Vantage Point, a conspiracy of incredible complexity, involving at least a dozen people, some of them on the inside, all operating together with split-second timing to bamboozle, mislead, and decoy, and willing to do things like create a distraction by throwing a powerful bomb into a crowd. Trouble is, I don’t believe in such conspiracies. Your typical political or religious malcontent is capable of slicing a woman’s throat with a box cutter and flying a plane into a building, but otherwise could fuck up a two-car funeral. In my opinion, there ain’t no Joker out there, no Moriarty, no criminal mastermind of any kind. I simply have never seen any evidence of him. Osama? Don’t make me laugh. All that pig-fucker did was provide the dough and point the idiot martyrs in the right direction. If he points enough of them, sooner or later one of them will be successful.
So I don’t really believe in elaborate setups like we see in this movie, but I don’t believe in elaborate jewel heists and bank robberies, either, and I still enjoy Topkapi and The Thomas Crown Affair. And this movie is quite enjoyable up until the last 15 minutes, when it tips over the edge from improbable to ludicrous.
It’s been compared (unfavorably) to Rashomon, Kurosawa’s masterpiece of a story told by different narrators and how differently each can perceive events. I think it’s more like {{Run Lola Run (Lola rennt) or He Love Me, He Loves Me Not (À la folie… pas du tout) in that it backs up every ten minutes and lets you see the action from another perspective, but they are all real, uninfluenced by the POV character. This way you get to see the big action several times … I lost track, but I think it was 8 repetitions. The action is frenetic but logical as we learn more and more each time through … but it faltered badly at the end, going way overboard. I have little patience with bringing in a small child to ramp up the tension, especially one so dumb she runs out into heavy traffic not once but twice, and stands stock-still staring stupidly as an ambulance bears down on her. And I do not believe the sub-human mass murderer driving the ambulance would swerve to avoid her.
Mom and Francine: Don’t see this one. Way too much flash cutting and jerkycam.