Vantage Point a Heartpounding Thriller--Literally

Although Vantage Point boasts several well-known actors, most notably Forest Whitaker and Dennis Quaid, I was most interested to see Matthew Fox's performance, since I'm a huge fan of the TV drama Lost. Fox, who plays the fearless leader Jack Shephard on Lost, has been on TV for awhile, but he seems to have only recently delved into film--he had roles in Smokin' Aces and We Are Marshall. If I'm not mistaken (and I very well may be), his role as Secret Service agent Kent Taylor in Vantage Point is only his third foray in silver screen acting--and I don't think he did a bad job at all.

Dennis Quaid plays another Secret Service agent, Thomas Barnes, who's with Taylor when the President of the U.S.A, while about to give a speech in Spain, gets shot. All hell breaks loose, but as the plot unfolds, we see the assassination from several points of view and begin to realize that what we initially saw is not necessarily as it seemed. Several points of view, several vantage points--get the name of the movie, now?

Forest Whittaker plays a tourist who films the assassination on his little handycam, and although his role in the movie seems rather unimportant at first, once all the different viewpoints converge and the action really starts to unfold, his character becomes one of the most important and climactic.

Quaid relentlessy pursues those responsbile for trying to kill the president, and tries to put all the pieces of the puzzle together. He realizes that this dastardly deed isn't as simple as it seems, and that he needs to understand how everything fits together if he's going to catch the bad guys.

The movie is incredibly fast-paced and terribly exciting; I literally found my heart racing and adrenaline pumping rapidly throughout my bloodstream a couple times during an extreme car-chase scene. I know that car-chases are supposed to be a Hollywood cliche--and I honestly tried to tell my beating heart that, but it didn't slow down until the cars did! Cliche or not, the car chase was exhilarating as hell and a lot of fun.