Vantage Point

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

Flat-out one of the more exciting and original gut-busters that Hollywood has produced in many a month. It's virtually all action, but the action is never mindless and it is full of marvelous surprises every step of the way.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

Three-fourths of a terrific thriller, which in this dreary run of winter movies seemed like clear spring water to this parched traveler. The setup is so riveting, the suspense so carefully prolonged, that I didn't mind when it unraveled into lunacy near the end.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

Because Vantage Point is really a concept movie, the actors are not much more than pawns on the chessboard: They move one square at a time.

The New Yorker David Denby

Is it art? Not remotely. But, up to the final scenes, it’s a tremendous piece of engineering. After all, the narratives have to synch up visually, which can’t be easy to manage. And the hurtling force of Vantage Point is fun to watch.

Time Richard Corliss

The movie is best seen as straightforward, sometimes harrowing melodrama, packed with mistaken identities, beautiful villains, a kindly tourist who can outrace the bad guys, and a lost little girl whom the film brazenly sends onto a highway full of speeding cars. It's as if Dakota Fanning had wandered onto the streets of Ronin.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

If you're up for good nihilist entertainment, look no further.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

A slick and exciting film

ReelViews James Berardinelli

It's a fast-paced motion picture that fails the "reality test" but maintains a certain intensity for its entire running length. It's entertaining in the same way that an episode of "24" is entertaining.

Premiere Ryan Stewart

When Vantage Point is staying with Quaid and Fox as they hunt the suspected assassins (including the arrestingly beautiful Israeli actress Ayelet Zurer) it's a perfectly serviceable thriller with high production values and some better-than-average car chases.

Empire Kim Newman

Some okay thrills with good performances and some smarts. But the last reel plunge spoils things. Myth for the new millennium: any average, out-of-shape middle-aged Yank, including the President, can get in a punch-up with a few well-armed, super-trained terrorists, and win.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

Vantage Point starts to slide off the rails when it tracks a tourist (Forest Whitaker) and his trusty camcorder; instead of Zapruder-like intrigue, the episode has him running around like an agent in a rote thriller.

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

With a less pedigreed international cast the whole thing would be a disaster, as opposed to a chilly new kind of disaster film.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

Quaid and Whitaker, who serve more or less as the designated humans in this clockwork contraption of a film, are capable in corny roles, but otherwise Vantage Point is as stuffed with cardboard performances and expositional speeches as any seventies disaster flick.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

At a certain point, its sheer can you top this excess, and credibility files out the window three's no reason to continue paying attention.

USA Today Claudia Puig

Turns out to be a tepid thriller that promises more than it delivers.

The New York Times Manohla Dargis

This is competent if completely impersonal filmmaking of a familiar type that finds the usual allotment of famous, or at least famous enough, actors.

Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach

An overly gimmicky and fatally repetitive terrorist thriller that quickly wears out its welcome.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

The loaded cast does what it can with the paper-thin characterizations, but Vantage Point gets hijacked early by its high-concept premise, and it quickly devolves into a by-the-numbers thriller with the numbers out of order.

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

How can we take this doomsday scenario seriously when we keep waiting for Bruce Willis to rise from the ashes?

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

The truth is that two other films with Greengrass' name on them, "The Bourne Supremacy" and "The Bourne Ultimatum," have spoiled us for this kind of thriller filmmaking, and stacked against that, Vantage Point doesn't have a chance.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

By the end, Vantage Point is such a unholy mess of drooling sentiment and sloppy loose ends that you’ll hate yourself for being suckered in.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

The result is a movie that's both clever and stupid - an interesting feat.

New York Post Kyle Smith

Throws in enough hurtling bodies, screaming bullets and totaled cars that it at least holds your interest, so it passes the worth-watching-if-you're-stuck-on-an-airplane test.

Washington Post John Anderson

Although it was held back by the studio for about a year, someone apparently came to the inevitable conclusion that no amount of ripening time was going to help this gimmicky and ultimately harebrained movie.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

Wears off in about 10.8 minutes.

The Hollywood Reporter Sheri Linden

Straight out of the slice-and-dice school of filmmaking, Vantage Point fractures chronology and perspective in a vain attempt to disguise its flimsiness.

Film Threat Pete Vonder Haar

What you won’t be able to ignore is the ridiculous way Vantage Point’s brings everything to an end.

Village Voice Scott Foundas

Produced by Paul Greengrass, and conceived as something of a companion film to his own "Bloody Sunday," there wasn't a moment in "Omagh" that rang false. There's not a single one in Vantage Point that rings true.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

Vantage Point has nothing going on. There's no artistic, philosophical or even jolly entertainment reason for adopting this strategy. It's just arbitrary, a gimmick.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

If you can work your way past Vantage Point's goofy casting that places a bland, blank-eyed Hurt in the White House, then I suppose you can manage to forgive this "Rashomon" rip-off's other glaring idiosyncrasies, of which there are many.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

Why, beating the audience about the ears, eyes and brain with essentially the same sequence of events from eight characters' points of view, none of which adds much more than deafening hysteria and identically dreadful music. The filmmakers seem to have missed the point that each re-enactment in "Rashomon" provides new and conflicting information. It makes you wonder if they studied the wrong movie. Maybe they rented "Rush Hour," or a video on Rosh Hashanah.

Variety Justin Chang

A 23-minute movie dragged out, via some narrative gimmickry, to a punishing hour and a half.